Figuring It Out for Himself

ANDREA MUIR finds that visual artist MICHAEL FORBES has thrived in the do-it-yourself school of art education

MICHAEL FORBES didn’t take art at school.

‘I couldn’t,’ he says.  ‘I was made to do chemistry instead – I think they tried to hammer it out of me.’

Well, whoever ‘they’ were, they didn’t succeed and now Michael is one of the Highland’s up-and-coming artists - with a difference.
 

‘I think now, in retrospect, being self-taught was the best thing to happen to me.  The only thing I missed about college was the beer – er, social life.’

He laughs and his laughter is infectious.
 
‘No, but it’s true.  I didn’t have anyone telling me what was right and wrong about my pictures; I just knew I had to paint them.’  He continued to paint while he worked his way through various jobs, from drawing office to fish factory.  He even had a shot at the army but he says: ‘all the time I was at the selection centre I kept thinking: What am I doing here?  Then I came home and saw the painting I’d been working on before I went away and I just knew that painting was the only thing for me!’
 

‘I get inspiration and ideas all over the place.’ He says and refers to the picture ‘Tuesday afternoon.’ ‘It sums up what Inverness used to be like and what Tuesday afternoons can be like, anywhere. I don’t know where the idea came from but I liked it, so I painted it.’
 

‘You never know when you’re going to see something that captures your imagination and, life being what it is, can make you forget so much really quickly.’

Michael’s most recent successes were the inclusion of the joyful ‘Getting Away from it All’ which can be seen at Inverness airport until July, and the release of a boxed set of cards entitled Adventures of an Orange Cat.
 

It seems that Michael’s self-taught ethos continues.

© Andrea Muir, 2004