Michael Stubbs (b. 1961, West Sussex, UK) is a British artist based in Glasgow Scotland. He also maintains a studio practice across England, in particular London and Suffolk.
Stubbs makes abstract paintings through a process akin to the collage more often associated with representation. He paints on the floor by pouring household paint and tinted varnishes, into which he inserts (and removes after drying) popular graphic signs and symbols, and also photos from his phone which depict his studio tools, paints and equipment. The resulting simultaneous optical effects incorporate the material conditions of production and suggest the layered screens of computing, while retaining hints of pop art and graphic design within an abstract expressionist language - pouring being a classic technique of Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. That brings various systems into a democratic post-modern collision: the utilitarian decoration of houses, the symbols and signs of advertising, the social realm of the online world and the history of painting. That can be taken as countering the view of abstraction as the independent expression of the artist’s emotional states. Equally, though, one can concentrate on the seductive formal qualities, be that colour, texture, crispness or multi-layered, process-based activity balanced by calmer zones.
Stubbs holds an MA and PhD in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
His solo exhibitions include Cornerstone Gallery, Liverpool Hope University, 2024 and 2017; Reid Corridor Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, 2020; Hollenbach Gallery, Stuttgart, 2015 and 2006; Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, 2011 and 2010. Public collections include the UK Government Art Collection, the British Council and the VandenBroek Foundation/Lisse Art Museum.
