Michael Foers

Michael Foers Biography

Michael Foers was born in Yorkshire, England in 1955. He immigrated to Canada with his family as a child. Growing up in the splendor of the Canadian landscape, Foers began to paint the natural beauty that surrounded him. He worked for many years in the great North, accumulating a collection of visual images and sketches to which he would later return as a professional painter.

It was in a logging community near Sultan, Ontario, that his artistic convictions were crystallized. Foers saw in the forest a quiet and colorful place of tranquil introspection, where his own moods were reflected in play of light on organic forms. Foers studied the work of both Canadian and European master landscapists such as Tom Thompson, and Claude Monet. His modern Impressionist aesthetic combines this bi-national impulse, which Foers has further cultivated with travel to Europe and plein-air painting. From Thompson, Foers borrows a bold and experimental use of color: trees take on the bright floral tones of red, orange, and yellow. Their arching branches and flat leaves have a geometric, even architectural aspect.

While his painting is visibly rooted in the countryside, Foers explores an abstract impulse. His style reveals much of his combined interest in expressionistic color and abstracted form. The artist’s light and energetic brushstroke is paired with a vibrant and often autumnal palette. He applies staccato bursts of paint that, together, create a vibrant mosaic. Through his dynamic use of color and shape, the artist offers a personal view of the natural environment that has been his home and livelihood since youth.