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The Review - FEATURE
 

Kenwood House


The Men’s Pond


The Viaduct Pond near the Vale of Health in watercolour.

The Tree with the Hole on the Sandy Path to the Toll House



Michael Toohig
Escape into the landscape

Artist Michael Toohig is in love with the great outdoors, writes Dan Carrier

COMMERCIAL illustration is a dying art. With computers and digital photography the need for an artist who can put together an image has diminished, a fact that means the traditional hand-to-mouth existence of the artist continues into the present day.

Michael Toohig has managed to eke out a living as an illustrator. If you go to Waitrose and buy packet of dried fruit, it has a still life by Michael decorating it.
But, as a new exhibition at Lauderdale House reveals, his talents lie not just in producing images for companies with products to sell, but as a landscape artist.
Michael, 50, who lives in Gospel Oak, has chosen Hampstead Heath for his subject. Although this is a departure from his commercial work, even this has helped put food on the table. Three years ago he was browsing a map produced by the City of London, who look after the Heath.
“It was very boring. Full of information, but hard to read,” he reveals.
This gave him the idea of producing a map of the Heath using his illustrations. He took months to produce a detailed illustration and then hawked his work around printing companies until he discovered one prepared to take a gamble and produced 5,000 copies. Placed at the tills of shops in Gospel Oak, Highgate and Hampstead, it sold out, and a second print run is under way.
He said: “I got bored after about eight years of doing fruit for companies. I got a reputation for it: he’s the man who does fruit, go to him, people would say.”
But even this sort of work has dried up.
“There are lots of people in the world who want to be artists, but 97 per cent of them actually have to do something else to make a living,” he reveals.
“But nowadays with computer technology, the traditional commercial artist is virtually redundant.”
Working as a commercial artist means Michael is well versed in many styles.
“As a working artist you have to be able to do what people want.
“There are some who are known for one thing, others who are known for different aspects – but I am a jack of all trades. I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. Fruit for eight years? What a bore.”
His walks on the Heath with a collapsible easel have produced 20 paintings – 16 in watercolour, four in oils. I walk there every day, and I know the feel of the place. I spend summer evenings there and I go and work. When I painted the Viaduct pond, there was some guys there fishing: I was there painting, and we were both doing our own things with nature.”
Michael grew up in north London and studied art at Harrow Art College.
He said: “I came from an arty family – my father was an architect for a building firm. Each year his company had an art competition and each year myself, my sister and my parents would work hard on our entries.”
A stint in America – he spent 10 years working in California – made him more aware of his love of working outdoors, which pushed him further towards painting landscapes.
He continues: “The light was Mediterranean. For an artist, it made you want to head outdoors and work, and when I moved back to London I brought this with me.”

• Artography – Paintings of the Heath. Tuesday, April 25-Sunday, May 7, 2006. Lauderdale House. Call 020 8348 8716.
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