Tasmanian artist exhibits at USQ

One mans view of nature and his relationship with his surroundings form the basis of the University of Southern Queensland's (USQ) Art Gallery's current exhibition.

Artist and USQ graduate, Michael Schlitz, is a renowned printmaker whose work is exhibited throughout Australia. Michael will visit the University on Wednesday 21 March where he will host a free artist floor talk discussing his exhibition The Nature of Things, and the motivation for the work.

USQ Gallery Curator, Simon Mee, said while Michaels work focused on his surrounding, he wasn't sentimental about his relationship with the environment.

'Michael lives by himself in his self-built pole house in the bush covered hills of Huonville in Tasmania. With no electric power, he has built the house with hand tools and whatever he can find.

'The large woodblocks made from sheets of plywood are recycled and now line his outhouse (if Michael becomes too successful his dunny may become worth more than his house).

'But Michael is not a blinkered romantic idealist when it comes to nature, when his neighbours complained that he had launched a possum plague upon them – rather than apologise for the possums, he talks instead about getting a bow and arrows.

'Similarly the works have that same sense that the nature he portrays is a wild nature, not a genial fellow that beams only goodness but is morally ambivalent and though loved, shows equal potential for harm as well as beauty. In discussion he talks about early explorers and there willingness to work with what they can find.

Simon said Michael's lifestyle and work were in harmony.

'In Michael's large scale woodprints, he often depicts a solitary man seemingly trapped or encompassed by nature. They exude a dark melancholy which undermines any temptation to see the works as whimsical surrealism.

'His work is neither simplistically auto-biographic or didactic about his ideals and love of the environment that he lives in. It would be fairer to say that his work represents an extension of both his life and ideals.'

Michael's work is held in both public and private collections, and his work is currently also on display at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.  The University collection contains one of his works which is on display as part of this exhibition.

WHAT: Michael Schlitz floor talk
WHEN: Wednesday 21 March, 12noon
WHERE: USQ Art Gallery

Media Contact: Connie-Louise Alexander, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 2977