Mike Welsh

I Was Born on a Saturday Night 2010 mixed medium sculpture 60 x 75 x 27 inches

Hang In There Baby #3 2010 graphite, ink and acrylic on paper 30 x 40 inches (eyes glow in the dark)

Untitled 2010 unique screen print, wax, glass, and ink on framed paper 9 1/2 x 12 each

Michael Welsh is an artist living and working in Portland Oregon

My work explores the world that we humans have created for ourselves, most specifically a world ripe with global warming, war, and an international recession. This most recent body of work addresses specifically the artificial and unstable nature of the factions of society who, faced with such insurmountable odds, have chosen to drop out. In many cases the lifespan of these groups is short and they are seldom able to enact lasting real change on the mainstream society they are claiming to reject. My work reflects the wasted energy, loss of innocence and personal experiences of these individuals.

In the case of my work, vibrant depictions of the leftovers of a culture dominated by hopelessness reflect the human waste, dark humor, and rampant sexual malaise of contemporary society. Paintings and sculptural objects experience this world in the way that the human body would, and therefore act as a stand in for the dire circumstances and eventual failure of this world to change its outcome.

The color spectrum that I am interested in using is selected for its artificiality and industrial quality. Spray paint, day glow and fluorescence are used to reflect a buildup and expenditure of energy through personal experience. Simultaneously, surface is used to denote physical action on behalf of this unseen population and the passage of time. Art objects and images are embedded with individual and collective experiences as a way to address real and personal questions.  

Daniel J. Glendening

Currently lives and works in Portland, OR
MFA Visual Studies Candidate, 2011, Pacific Northwest College of Art


Doomsday Device IV-VI.
Cast polyester resin and aluminum on light table. 2010.


The world in which we live is largely composed of unknowns. Theories describing multiple folding layers of space and time, or the universe bound by subatomic vibrating strings of energy, seek to explain away the unknowns but, invariably, lead to others. Science fact and science fiction rest on a sensitive balance of polarity, and a gentle nudge can easily reverse their positions. My work strives to reproduce that balance, to activate the tension between the known and the unknown, between truth and mystery, curiosity and anxiety.

Formally, this dichotomy often manifests itself in my work as a tension between representation and abstraction. Pieces such as Singularities, a collection of pit-fired clay forms, or Doomsday Device I-IX, a series of cast black resin objects, reference recognizable forms such as stones, architectural fragments or the impression of the human hand. The pieces retain a sense of mystery, while allowing a viewer to project himself onto the work. The pieces evoke relics or artifacts of some ancient or not-yet-formed world, and offer some sense of coming to terms with, and looking beyond, our apocalyptic age.

I seek a limitless space. My multi-disciplinary process is rooted in exploration: a testing of limits, a reaching into the unknown. Much of that exploration manifests itself through experimentation: the manipulation of materials and media through a process of trial and error, to arrive at an unforeseen destination. These explorations rarely move linearly, on a single track, but laterally, back and forth across media and form, building a web of connections. Working in this way, one piece does not directly feed the next, but each feeds each other, moving transversely across space in an open-ended exploration.


Every Answer We Have Sought or Will Seek
Graphite on paper. 50"x119.5" 2010


Total Annihilation
Graphite on paper. 50"x119.5" 2010