Michael Muir

Honing his studio skills through formal studies in painting and design, Muir has departed from traditional plein-air painting to describe more ambiguous visual puzzles derived from the urban landscape. In our digitally redolent culture, his exclusive use of the palette knife acts as a kind of universal leveller, flattening and de-pixilating his high-key canvases.

Inspired by the experience of travel and viewing locations with fresh eyes, Muir’s works playfully oscillate between memory and reality, figuration and abstraction, the familiar and the unknown. Based on a trip to Italy, his most recent paintings introduce an extended palette and a more structured geometric and architectural focus, one in which his figures play a strong compositional role.

Born in Scotland, Muir’s childhood was spent in South East Asia before settling in Sydney. Muir was the winner of the Mosman Art Prize 2014 and has been a finalist in a number of awards over the past decade including the Wynne, Sulman and Fleurieu Art Prizes. His work is represented in Australia’s Artbank collection, Parliament House Art Collection and private collections throughout Australia and Internationally.