About Michelle’s Art Practice : inspiration and influences

Artist Statement

Michelle Cobbin is a female abstract painter. Her work draws upon her longstanding interests in contemplative practices and abstract art. With painting, she is intrigued by the dynamic relationship between colour and feeling, and how the simplest of images triggers an immediacy of response. 

She is fascinated by how humans are emotionally affected by imagery that is not figurative or representational in nature. What goes on? Why and how are we impacted in such particular ways? She asks these questions of herself and the viewer.

When working, Michelle is constantly in relationship with the painting, responding to colour by how it makes her feel. She makes work in series or themes, which allows her to set boundaries for a project. Some paintings are many-layered, reflecting how they evolved over time. Other pieces are born complete, although these are a rare species that flow through her only when stars seem to align or she’s delightfully shred of all self-consciousness.

More often than not, the process is not straightforward and different every time. She might start a painting in warm tones, for example, then feel completely out of sync with those colours the next time she’s in the studio. That work will then be put aside or painted over. This used to be frustrating until she realised that her work is about visceral expression, so choosing the right colour to work with 'in the moment' is an essential part of the process. 

Michelle is interested in how the viewer responds to the work: what one sees in a painting, and how it resonates. It's as if pictures have the power to tell their own stories, which are projected onto them by the viewer. One of her favourite quotes, which highlights the link between subjective experience, in the general sense, and how one approaches a work of art, is from the painter and writer John Berger: 

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Our vision is continually active, continually moving, continually holding things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.”

— Ways of Seeing, 1972.