Mike Worobec
Mike Worobec
Mike Worobec

Work

October 2010-present: Fulltime professional artist with studio at Hackney Wick, London.
January 2004- September 2010: Head of Art at Bishop Douglass School, East Finchley. London.
January 2002-September 2003: Textiles and Art teacher at Kingsland School, Dalston, London.
March 2001- January 2002: Freelance Stylist working with models, singers on shoots and pop promotional films.  Assisted shopping editor on Elle magazine and Fashion Stylist Victoria Adcock on photo assignments.
July 1993-February 2001:  Creative worker at Scotland Yard Adventure Centre, adventure play for children with special needs in Edinburgh. Responsible for 50 volunteers. Worked on an annual Community Art festival and Float designer for Several Fringe festival parades. Gave talks and workshops to bodies and educationalists on the power of play. Represented Edinburgh Council in Munich presenting an illustrated talk to the Major.

Education

1990-1991:  Post Graduate Certificate in Education. Trained as Art and Design teacher.
1982- 1986:  B.A Honours Degree in drawing and painting at Edinburgh College of Art.

Art Exhibitions

March 3rd - 30th 2012 : Social Morphologies, curated by Lloyd Gill at The Lloyd Gill Gallery.
February-April 2012 : The Other Gallery,  Dalston, London.
November 2011 :  shortlisted for the National Open Art Competition, Chichester.
July 29-31 July 2011: Hackney Wicked Festival: Open studio/ exhibition of recent works at the festival.
April– May 1995 : ‘I saw you and loved you’: a one-man show of paintings at the Blue Moon in Edinburgh.
November 1987:Group Show At Gallery 369, Edinburgh to celebrate the centenary of St Thomas of Aquins School.
January 1987: ‘Fair Weather Friends’: A group show at the Calton Studios, Edinburgh. Organised and hung show appearing on Scottish Television’s, Scotland Today programme advertising show with a conceptual snow sculpture on Calton Hill.
Work in private collections: Italy, Sweden, New Zealand and United Kingdom.

Interests and Skills

Interior design and customising of furniture. Garden design and planting. Literature. Cuisine. Theatre and costume Design; Art Director for Children’s and Fringe Theatre at Edinburgh Festivals. Fashion Model. Performance and acting, appearing in Fringe films. Vocalist; recording and performing in Pop band.

Artist Statement

Michael moved to London after leaving Scotland in 2000. He worked as a Stylist on fashion shoots and pop promos, later teaching at a North London Comprehensive school as a very successful Head of Art.
He is influenced by the many and varied experiences drawn from his life. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1963, in a winter that broke records for its sub-zero temperatures. His father, Ukrainian and his Mother Italian, immigrated to Britain in the mid 1950’s to escape poverty and oppression. They sunk roots, worked hard and strove for a better life. The Roman Catholicism of his mother and the Orthodoxy of his father cast a long shadow. Potent imagery and ceremony stimulated his senses. Cultural events with costume, music and dance, witnessed and celebrated in the bosom of these communities, seeped into his psyche. These early years nurtured a life long passion and belief in the power of art.
Michael studied Painting and Drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating in 1986 with a BA Honours Degree. Today he has returned to his first love, painting as a professional artist with his studio in Hackney Wick, East London, working on a new collection of paintings.

Inspiration

The work may be seen as a visual metaphor for the biological process of reproduction, growth and development, the complexity of personality and identity. On closer inspection, smaller, individual characters or organisms seem to exist, separate and independent of the mother image. The dogmatic and impelling force of a repeat is of interest to the artist. How a single element or motif when allowed to reproduce will recreate itself. One can still see the genesis of the first incarnation reborn into a new, more complex organic form. Inevitably at some point, growth is checked, constrained or ended.
In nature this could be through a lack of nutrition, illness or even death. In these paintings the physical boundaries of the canvas dictates the ending of the scheme. Visual reality stops, yet the viewer can continue this process, imagining how the work would change and develop if the pattern was freed and allowed to multiply away from the canvas edge.