There is a temptation to think that artists eventually ‘arrive’. That after decades of practice they develop a signature style, master their craft and finally stand at the summit of their success.
But spend a morning with Sunshine Coast abstract artist Michael Whitehead and that notion is dispelled as mere fancy.
Michael describes making art as “an endless road trip”. Every painting leads to another question. Every breakthrough reveals another possibility. Every exhibition marks another milestone on the journey, rather than an ‘arrival’.
Michael started out as a graphic artist in Melbourne in the mid-70s and had a brief stint teaching art before returning to painting when he moved to the Sunshine Coast more than 30 years ago. He was still in realist painting mode then, doing “really detailed stuff”.
“I didn’t do a lot of it, but I did enough to realise there’s a lot of brilliant landscape and portrait artists out there, and very dedicated to what they’re doing, and I was just in the sea of it – what was my point of difference?”
The answer arrived from a fellow Coast artist and mentor, Norwegian-born Svein Koningen, who challenged Michael to abandon certainty and embrace risk.
“He’d say, ‘You’ve got to free up, you’ve got to go for it’.” Svein’s advice sounds simple but embracing it proved far more difficult for Michael.
He admits there was a “lot of risk” in changing tack, and after “burning” through loads of canvasses, Michael reached a point where he asked himself, “Is this really worth doing?”
“And then all of a sudden, something clicks and you go, this works. You’ve got to make the mistakes to find the path.”
Michael admits he didn’t find much success early on. He sold a few paintings at a market in Brisbane that used to be in King George Square, with the sales mostly paying for art supplies. Then he was picked up by a couple of galleries.
His network grew from there and exhibitions followed, along with the realisation he needed to develop “a more recognisable style”.
Looking back over the past two decades of creating, Michael, 72, sees not isolated paintings but an unfolding journey.
“I feel there is a progression there and I think as you look back you can sort of see where an idea or a sequence of paintings have started to wind down and I think, how do I reignite this?”
Sometimes that spark comes from discovering an unexpected effect in a material. Sometimes it’s a gesture that feels worth exploring. Sometimes it’s simply recognising that a familiar approach has reached its natural conclusion.
For all that experimentation, Michael remains a tough critic of his own work. “Just because I painted it, it doesn’t mean it’s any good,” he says.
“You’ve got to stand back and take a look sometimes. Because it’s abstract, it doesn’t have the same set of rules applied to it, I guess, but by the same token it still has to have an aesthetic quality, as long as it doesn’t look naive, laboured, forced or mannered.
“You don’t hide the gestures or things you’ve made, sometimes paint is going to run off here or there, and if you’re happy for it to stay there, leave it.”
That judgement extends to knowing when to stop. Michael believes artists must first satisfy themselves before thinking about audiences or sales.“You’ve got to please yourself because if you’re not happy with it, it can’t go out [into the world].
“Sometimes when you’re painting, you think ‘when do I stop?’ and I think the time to stop is when there’s nothing left inside you that still annoys you.”
But leave it too long and spontaneity disappears“You can paint something to death,” he adds.
His willingness to experiment extends even to unconventional materials. For years he incorporated bitumen beneath layers of paint, embracing its unpredictable ability to split, crack and create subtle tension beneath the surface.
“I use it as a tool, not as the end result.”
Those hidden layers mirror the way Michael thinks about painting itself. Every finished canvas contains traces of earlier decisions, abandoned ideas and revisions invisible to the viewer but essential to the final work.
It is why he rejects the common misconception that abstract painting is somehow easier or less considered than realism.
“You go to an exhibition of abstract works and you can see the enormous amount of thought that’s gone into it,” he says. “It wasn’t just, here’s a canvas, throw this at it, smear this across it.”
He draws inspiration from artists such as Guy Maestri and Sydney Ball, whose work carries that same depth of thought where every brushstroke appears charged with intention. Looking at their work reinforces a humbling realisation.
“I’d think it took them [the artists] a real long time to get to that point. It doesn’t matter how complex or simple it appears, it took a long time to get there and you think if you are going to be any good at this you are going to spend a long time trying to get there – and are you there anyway?”
While evolving as an abstract artist, Michael has also spent a lot of time wandering art galleries and art fairs, looking and being inspired.
He says one of the best things he’s ever done was visit the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London last year. The exhibition is open to a broad spectrum of creatives, from “quite high-end artists” including German artist Anselm Kiefer, whose monumental paintings and mixed-media works have become some of the defining achievements of contemporary art, right through to student works.
For Michael, seeing the work of other artists reinforces the same question that has followed him throughout his career.
“When do you ever stand back from a painting and think that’s the pinnacle of my achievement?”
For him, the answer is never.
Growing up through the musical and cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, Michael admired artists who challenged convention rather than followed formulas. Experimental musicians such as Frank Zappa inspired him because they refused to accept established structures, much as abstract painters abandoned traditional ways of seeing landscapes and representation.
“I guess music is a subconscious influence, I always have tunes in my head.”
The influence appears not only in the rhythm of his paintings but also in their titles, many borrowed from memorable song lyrics or books.
“I don’t go searching for titles, they just pop up from memory.”
That connection between music and painting carries into his newest exhibition, Return to Forever, named after the influential 1970s jazz fusion band.
The exhibition brings together a cohesive collection of works linked through shared materials, gestures and atmosphere rather than a literal narrative. It will be Michael’s third exhibition with Gallery G Contemporary in Hastings Street, Noosa, continuing a relationship that has helped his evolving abstract practice reach an ever-growing audience.
Despite decades of exhibitions, gallery representation and sales that have taken his work into corporate collections and homes overseas, Michael remains unconvinced that artistic fulfilment is ever fully attained.
“I’m never really relaxed with anything, I think it’s just human nature. No matter what it is in life, you always think ‘I could’ve done that better.”
Perhaps that quiet dissatisfaction is precisely what keeps the journey alive. Every painting contains the possibility of the next one. Every exhibition becomes another departure point.
For Michael, arriving has never been the goal. The road itself is where his art lives.