ASK THE ARTIST: 12 Questions & A Joke with Mike McAllister
Updated: Oct 24, 2022
Though Mike McAllister had a career in creative advertising and marketing for 37 years, he never strayed far from his love of creating fine art. Now retired, Mike has concentrated his attention to his painting and love of restoring antique cars. Mike earned a BFA from the High Museum School in Atlanta, GA and attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and the University of Delaware. Though he has worked in many mediums his true passion is soft pastels finding inspiration in the works of both the French and American Impressionists, the American master Edward Hopper and by the colorful pastels and oils, of Wolf Kahn. With more than 75 group shows and over a dozen one-person shows, his works reside in numerous public and private collections throughout the US, Baja Mexico, Canada and Asia including the Cleveland Museum of Art.
“My goal in painting is to interpret my very personal reaction to a scene or event so that the viewer also forms a reaction which- while not necessarily the same as mine- is no less personal.”
-Michael Kay McAllister
Q If there was a favorite work of art you could hang or display in your home, which would it be?
MM If I could obtain any Pissarro piece it would make me very happy but, three stand out: “Boulevard Montmartre Winter Morning”, “Farm at Osney” and “Vegetable Gardens in Eragny”.
Q If there was one dead artist that you could hang out with for a day, who would that be? Why?
MM Camille Pissarro. His understanding of color, tone, technique, and design have deeply influenced my work but I’d like to know how he works and what his thought process is.
“Painting, art in general, enchants me. It is my life. What else matters? When you put all your soul into a work, all that is noble in you, you cannot fail to find a kindred soul who understands you, and you do not need a host of such spirits. Is not that all an artist should wish for?”
“Work at the same time on the sky, water, branches, ground, keeping everything going on an equal basis… Don’t be afraid of putting on color… Paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression.”
– Camille Pissarro, French artist (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903)
Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas, US Virgin Islands. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54. In 1873 he helped establish a collective society of fifteen aspiring artists, becoming the “pivotal” figure in holding the group together and encouraging the other members. Art historian John Rewald called Pissarro the “dean of the Impressionist painters”, not only because he was the oldest of the group, but also “by virtue of his wisdom and his balanced, kind, and warmhearted personality”. Cézanne said “he was a father for me. A man to consult and a little like the good Lord,” and he was also one of Gauguin’s masters. Renoir referred to his work as “revolutionary”, through his artistic portrayals of the “common man”, as Pissarro insisted on painting individuals in natural settings without “artifice or grandeur”.Pissarro is the only artist to have shown his work at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions, from 1874 to 1886. He “acted as a father figure not only to the Impressionists” but to all four of the major Post-Impressionists, including Georges Seurat, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro
