Michael Canning, Bardo, carborundum, intaglio, 27 x 20 ⅖ in., ed. of 40, $3,500 framed
Captivated by the idea of the solitary and intensely private nature of creative endeavour, and with a profound sense of connection with the landscape of County Limerick in Ireland where he lives and works, Michael Canning is endlessly fascinated by the significance which attaches to the manipulation of simple materials. In works on paper, sculpture, paintings, prints, books and films he addresses the relationships between history and memory, matter and its transformations, the lineage of ideas, and what it means to make an image of something that already exists in the world. In an ongoing series of works presenting isolated weeds, growing from a foregrounded earthen bank, the rural landscape of County Limerick in the background rolling into the distance, Canning confronts us with the simple beauty of the mundane and the uncelebrated, its habitually unacknowledged presence, its exquisite ordinariness and its innate dignity too. The everyday is extraordinary, he says in these works, and he seeks to prove it so. Michael Canning studied Sculpture at Limerick School of Art & Design, and at The School of Fine Arts, Athens, Greece, after being awarded the Greek Government Scholarship. He completed an MA in Painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, in 1999. Michael is a lecturer at the Department of Fine Art, at Limerick School of Art & Design, LIT, and has taught on the Sculpture & Combined Media and Painting courses.