In 2002, I completed 1,000 works in my project, Songs for My Father, a body of landscape-inspired pieces in various media, dedicated to my late father, a Norwegian commercial tuna fisherman. I painted the landscape, a long-standing Nordic subject, in and around Acadia National Park, Maine, during the 1980's, and have worked on Monhegan Island during the summers since 1995. In winter 1999, while an artist-in-residence at Weir Farm, a national historic site administered by the National Park Service, in Wilton, CT, I began to explore the woodlands as a complement to the seacoast. In 2001, I was a visiting artist at Weir Farm.
My most recent series, Sanger Fra Mor, dedicated to my mother, is an ongoing visual essay. Working across media in paintings, watercolors, drawings and monotypes I use commercial fishing, oral history and nostalgic images to explore memory, identity and maritime history. For this project, I draw upon my experiences both as a young boy aboard ship with my father, and as a crewmember on a commercial fishing vessel. My connection to this subject continues during summer visits to Monhegan Island, Maine where I paint outdoors as well as research the resources of the Monhegan Museum.
In my studio practice I make oil paintings and works on paper, including monotypes. My imagery develops from direct landscape and studio painting, photography, and memories. I often work in series, using repetition, simplification and variation of image and media, to structure narratives. My monotypes combine old and new technology in multiple layers--computer editing, digital printing and traditional printmaking methods, including lithography, silkscreen, woodblock, linoleum cut, and handwork. The layering of these processes serves as a metaphor for memory.
In my work, the persistence of memory, stages of life, the environmental crisis, and the empty ocean are thematic subtexts.
Michael Torlen