Michael Geddis Art

Michael Geddis graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art from Ulster University in 2013.  The natural inquisitiveness that characterised his previous career as a veterinary surgeon for 25 years is evident in his artistic practice.   His finely detailed work expresses his interest and delight in the  beautiful complexity of living things viewed through a light microscope.   He intuitively draws cellular landscapes derived from memory and imagination.

The drawings contain features that typify light microscope images.   These include areas of sharp focus/silhouette, fuzzy out-of-focus elements and a sense of  diffuse light that appears to be coming from behind the pictorial plane.   His work also strongly features areas of intensively repetitive mark-making forming dense patterns.  His use of micro-surgeons magnifying loupes enables him to render very fine details.   The artist gratefully acknowledges support from the Arts Council Lottery Fund which funded the purchase of the loupes.

Geddis’s drawings and prints have been exhibited regularly right across Ireland (Athlone, Belfast, Dublin and Galway).  He recently showed some prints in Finland. His work has been included in the last three Royal Ulster Academy Annual Shows – one of his drawings from this year’s 2016/17 show has just been purchased for the National Collection of Art.

In 2016, he was conferred with a Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship.  He received a National Award for Drawing for his degree show at the Royal Dublin Society’s Annual Students Awards 2013 and the Lord Dunleath Memorial Bursary in 2014.  He was awarded bursaries by Belfast Print Workshop (2013) and Ards and North Down Borough Council (2015).  He has also been awarded artist residencies at Cill Rialaig, County Kerry (2015), Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Monaghan (2015), Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo (2016) and Heinrich Boll Cottage, Achill (2015).

His work is included in Ulster University’s Art Collection and private collections in Ireland, UK, USA and Canada.