gBorn on the last day of september 1980 mike started the rocky climb towards his artistic career at the age of three with a rather vivid piece titled 99 red balloons & by the age of seven had gone on to wow his friends with ninja turtles drawn from memory.
At secondary school was where michaels minds eye began to take on a life of its own & was soon aiding him in original composition, gaining notoriety for lampooning his friends (& arch rivals) in comic book style. He would go on to recieve praise from his peers in the art dept for his attention to detail as he excelled in black & white portrait work
In 1998 Michael embarked on an A level & NVQ side by side at the sixth form centre at his secondary school, whch in his end of term exams managed to sink an A+ & was beginning to show promise with acrylic & watercolour but unfortunatly due to his teacher going through some personal problems which led him to miss many a great deal of lessons during the new term, michael dropped out & joined the world of work
For several years michaels passion for art was only evident in his appreciation & no artistic endevours outside of portraits of colleagues children were undertaken, it appeared that the lack of downtime & direction were not short of robbing his dreams of making a living doing what he loved most.
Then in 2003 like a shining beacon calling him home a custom artist set up shop & opened for buisness under the banner of SQUID INK TATTOO,the establishment in which his longtime friend had began apprenticing & like a loyal & valiant fool michael layed down his skin upon which to be his buddies practice canvas.
Amongst recieving a collection of scar tissue & pretty shakey black & grey designs upon his once untainted flesh michael also recieved inspiration, a sense of direction & purpose when being challenged by the shops owner to create four pages of tattoo flash art of any theme he so wished.
Michael immediately set to work on design ideas which got his creative imagination flowing for the first time in years & began exorcising childhood demons via his art & began working on a flash set titled twisted imagery & then after several years of intense drawing began incorporating a more eastern spiritual theme. In spite of being happy with the work being produced Michael felt that he was capable of much better & thus never perused selling his flash until in late 2008 he decided that he needed to do something drastically in making his dream of living the life of a commercial artist come true & so got in touch with the editor in chief of a very reputable tattoo magazine who was quite impressed with what he saw & was very encouraging. Which led Michael to erect the first draft of this very website Initial reception was good among friends but the standard of work on display could not compete with the established pros & the site took a rather nasty bashing on one particular tattoo networking forum which led Mike to pull his socks up & seek guidance & to draw his arse off to raise the standard of his art. Which has recently led to the offer of a job at squid ink where his inspiration began (but has not heard from them in around 8 months & is not holding his breath) & more recently was approached about taking an art class at a local school. Mike is taking a fine arts course in January & is currently working on putting together a tattoo sketchbook using mixed mediums with the view of it being completed by Christmas (samples of which are available to view in the gallery) & is currently working on writing & illustrating his first children’s book “The dream stealer”