MICHAEL J CHAPPELL – Artistic visionary

Introduction by TANYA BRUCE-LOCKHART
Friend and Trustee of Dorset Visual Arts

A visionary, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is someone with imaginative insight, statesmanlike foresight and sagacity in planning - MICHAEL J. CHAPPELL has all of these qualities both as a man and as an artist. Michael is my friend and I am proud to be his. We both arrived in Dorset around the same time – last century!

Born in Finedon, a small village in Northamptonshire, Michael left school at 15 with a dream of going to university and a thirst to study art. Coming from a close-knit but working class family, there was little chance of pursuing his dream but encouraged by his siblings, particularly his sister Ruby and her husband David, Michael continued to paint and develop his natural talent and exhibit his work locally. His career as a youth worker enabled him to teach art and use art as a therapy for young people with social problems, to express their feelings. Michael has continued to teach – he is an inspirational enabler and has the patience to encourage and empower would-be artists of all ages.

Thirty-five years passed by and Michael married Janice and they had two children, Simon and Zöe, only then did he decide to try to fulfil his early ambitions and, spurred on by his wife, he achieved a BA (hons) in Fine Art at the University of Central England. Since graduating Michael has won many awards for his artistic endeavours.

It has taken Michael ten years since graduating to have the time, and the courage, to put together a book of his work, which illustrates the development of his own very personal visual language, and to communicate this vocabulary to the viewer through this work. Michael’s paintings illuminate and breathe the local landscape and seascape of West Dorset and yet reach far beyond the representation of what he sees, and what we see too. They are windows onto a world that we can feel, touch, smell, inhale as well as see. Countryside in summer sunshine and winter rain, spring renewal and autumnal decline; seascapes that reflect the ever-changing emotions of the ocean – silent, serene, angry, tumultuous. The paintings are profound and the sketchbooks are every bit as fascinating as they chart the journey of the artist’s eyes. Coastlines is a visual hymn to all that is glorious along the Jurassic Coast and inland to a timeless and unique landscape that is Dorset.

JAMES CROWDEN is a poet and writer who has travelled widely in the Middle East and India. His latest books include Dorset Man, Dorset Woman and Dorset coast, documenting the working lives of over 100 people. He is particularly drawn to the sea and the Coastlines poems reflect this fascination. His other interests include Cider, The Somerset Levels and Dartmoor. He also contributes to Landlines and occasional features on BBC Radio 4.