Michael Clague, The Falling Man Series October 2014
Michael Clague is a Montreal based visual artist who brings a profound understanding of materials handling to his figureative abstractions. Clague employs a sensitive
approach to mixing media in this suite of paintings that hold together as a series through the repetition of theme and motif . The graphic sillouette of a man seems to be jumping , spinning, leaping and falling through the paintings .. The artist uses a diverese and eclectic visual vocabulary to address the theme, digging into his printmaking, stencil , collage and drawing toolbox to unearth the essence of the falling man. This image has been a motif that the artist returns to intermittently over the years. The concept has evolved and slowly transformed throught intent, mood, and material as Clague himself has matured in his creative investigations.
Upon first encounter, the widely different iterations of the enviornment that the falling man falls through suggests that different artists using the same recurring motif created them. A closer look identifies that the brushwork, colour and draughtmanship are unified throught, it is simply that Clague's effortsless mixing of media imbues the series with a multi-faceted, eclectic and complex character.
Clague's personal life experience mirrors the diversity of influence. Raised bilingual in Quebec, he studied graphic design at Loughborough University , UK and obtained his BFA from The Art Institute of Boston. Clague lived and worked in Boston and Vermont USA before settling into the NDG area of Montreal. Clague succesfully juggles the demanding roles of provider, Father and practicing artist whilst just as effortlessly stepping in and out of the Francophone, Anglophone and multi-ethnic social structures that define Quebec.
The Diver, [ oil on canvas] presents the character as a solitary man, arms poised down and legs raised in a diving position, a black silhouette dwarfed by the gigantic undulating, horizontal ocean below and the agitated, grey brown orange lump of abstracted sky above. The diver is precisely hanging between the two, neither in the clouds nor the ocean but hovering in liminal space created in the hazy fire of the setting sun. The Diver represents the begining of the artist's exploration of this theme that he subsequently investigates over 20 more times . The final iteration is titled Reflection, [ oil and pencil on paper ] and after contorting the man into many awkward positions in the series , Clague returns to the original diver . The diver is now intergrated into his enviornment, abstracted graphite line work describes the lower horizon, amorphous grey smears and swipes describe the largest middle portion wherin the diver is situated and the clouds have reiterated to a dark grey shape at the top of the image. The sunset is no longer fiery red and vibrating, transforming into a hint of orange pulsating against the pure ultramarine that the figure now falls against. The development of both content and formal elements has allowed the diver to transform himself from one type of being, into another.
The growth and evolution of the falling man as subject and concept is intimately connected to the artist's own investigations into printmaking,collage, oil paints , pencils and varying matrix. Clague is masterful in allowing the medium and material to direct the development of the conceptual seed of the falling man to grow into a fully realized series.
Rose L.Williams
