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Michael Finn
(1921-2002)
Michael Finn was one of the most influential of the generation of artists engaged with the development of art education in Britain post WW2. His natural modesty and goodness underpinned a steely commitment to art, artists and the exploration of the creative process.
In the late fifties and sixties he was Principal of Falmouth School of Arts and instrumental in making it a beacon of excellence in art education, a position it holds today as University College Falmouth. In 1972 he became Principal of Bath Academy of Art at Corsham where he again made a big impact. Many leading artists of the day became visiting lecturers and Corsham became a by- word for creativity.
In 1982 Finn retired from the field of art education, where he had little time to pursue his own work, and he moved with his wife, Cely, to Tregeseal, St Just in Penwith, at the most western end of Cornwall.
For the next twenty years he painted with intelligence and energy to complete a sizable output of paintings, collages, drawings and constructions. A major exhibition at Newlyn Art Gallery in 1989 made his work known to a wider public and he went on to exhibit in London and the North.
Michael Finn was a lifelong Catholic and his work reflected his inner life. His reputation as a mature artist was largely in the interface of art and spirituality.
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In his early period (1950- 1965) Michael Finn was influenced by the post war abstract movement and his paintings were based upon organic forms but by the 1970s his upbringing in the home of his architect father, and the influence of the post-war constructivists began to prevail. There is very little work of these early years in the public domain. After 1980 there was extensive exploration of collage and relief structures laid and painted on muted grounds which in time led to more purely abstract two dimensional paintings with floating forms in the late seventies and early eighties. By now his palette had become richer and colours were deeply overlaid and rich. A number of devices such as vertical bars or lattices marked the external edges of the paintings and gouaches. After a major exhibition in 1989 he returned to mainly flat colour fields, often with minimal narrow verticals on either side. These were principally oil or acrylic on canvas and ranged from 12 x 12 inches to 6 or 7 feet. The colours now were mainly dark blue or rich dark red, purple, grey and black; the black being layered and under-worked so that the background colours emerged under varying light conditions. In the following years his palette brightened and centred colours appeared to float upon the receding ground colour. A number of elegant white and cream paintings also sprang from this period as did a number of works with hard edged bands of colour with subtle juxtapositions. In the mid nineties Finn began a series of mature works - tall vertical paintings with horizontal bands of colour. Again, over a period of five years the palette lightened and although most at home with sombre colours Finn's essential hopefulness comes through in these later works.
The search for spiritual simplicity had always been part of Michael Finn's life. His Christian faith, although rooted in Roman Catholicism, had been influenced by the theology of independent twentieth century spiritual writers such as Simone Weil (1909-1943).
In the early eighties Michael and Cely Finn's son Richard went up to Cambridge and asked Michael to make him a cross. (Richard is now a RC Priest in the Order of Preachers). From that moment the making of crosses and crucifixes interleaved with the making of two dimensional paintings. The crosses and crucifixes are all individual and have a simplicity which is both alluring and yet deceptive. They are made from rough bits of wood, sanded, gessoed and lightly painted in the typical muted colours of Finn's palette: their forms reflect the artist's deep understanding of Christian theology. Some are plainly about Christ's Passion and sacrifice; some are resurrection images and some speak clearly of The Ascension.
In 2000 Finn moved towards ever more simple shapes and some of these were expertly cast in bronze by the Somerset craftsman Michael Werbecki, who also brilliantly fabricated copies in metal of a few of the larger and more complex crucifixes.
Most of the religious sculptures by Michael Finn are in private or institutional collections. There are however still a few in the studio estate which are for sale.
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