Announcement 2
MICHAEL DRURY INTO THE WEST - October 5, 2001 Sullivan Goss - Santa Barbara
Michael Drury is a master conversationalist. Fortify him with a cup of coffee and release him to his studio among his paintings, and he'll gladly while away an afternoon with you discussing literature and music, espousing his politics, dissecting the odd inclinations of man or simply swapping surf stories. That he's traveled so broadly, read so widely and thought so deeply about the things that matter makes him a man burgeoning with fresh ideas and sturdy opinions. And he opines. But it's not a one-way street. Yes, Michael likes to be heard, but he also likes to listen. Because as an honest artist, at heart he wants to be enlightened as much as he wants to enlighten.
And, this, I think, is what fuels his roaring talent as a painter.
Why? Well, the land is a reticent and wily being. It doles out its secrets like a miser. What it reveals today may not be true tomorrow, or even that afternoon. So, to know it truly, to be able to pry its messages from its canyons, to translate the cryptic language of its creeks, to coax its hidden intentions from its bedrock, one must have the patience and passion to listen and to listen long.
For the past 30 years or so, Michael has fixed his painterly eye upon a select group of rugged outposts: the Nevada desert, the west coast of Ireland, coastal Northern and Central California; and his beloved native home of Santa Barbara. Season after season, he returns to these same arenas often to paint the same vistas – his sandstone boulder of East Camino Cielo, the fall sunrise on Black Mountain, the sweep of wind and weather at Point Conception. Each painting, of course, is a conversation, and with each conversation the land reveals a little more and brings him closer to what he calls the truth about these places.
"If you try to paint everywhere, you end up painting nowhere," he says.
That's why Michael's work is so lucid and persuasive. He has listened and listened long. Long enough to hear the true voice of the land.
Michael Hamer
October 2001
