Mike Green was born in New Zealand in 1941 and arrived in Australia as a small child. He is self-taught as an artist. From 1966 to 1974 he lived and worked in Canada and the USA, returning to live in Australian in 1974. Since then he has established a widespread reputation as one of the most accomplished of all contemporary watercolour artists. Well known for his technically adept and dreamy landscape paintings and his captivating interiors, that evokes a wistful yearning to a sentimental past.
Green’s recent works are alive with artistic adventure, counterculture, distrust and madness. They are a dramatic departure from the calming works of the artists oeuvre. Green creates ridiculous paintings for these ridiculous times. Fictional characters including kewpie dolls, toy soldiers, and Mexican wrestlers become protagonists in modern historical contexts. The figures serve as a gateway to question our shortcomings and how absurd it all really is. According to Green, “… trying to paint this madness out of my head using irony and metaphor, with some admitted pleasure.”
His work has been exhibited at several major galleries in Australia and overseas.