Michael McGovern: SEA to PDX Screen-Printer Extraordinare

"Untitled" by Michael McGovern
15" x 22"
Mixed Media on Wood Panel
$500.00

Michael McGovern is one of the featured artists currently in our gallery for the "Screen-Play" exhibit showing through Friday, February 5th. He is an instructor at Sev Shoon, a wonderful print-making studio located in Ballard. I was lucky enough to stumble across his work through the Sev Shoon website and was completely taken in by his dreamy and eerie images using screen-printing as one of his main mediums for creating his pieces. Here is a little background on his work - I highly encourage you to stop by and see his work in person, though.

Michael Edward McGovern - Artist Bio
Michael Edward McGovern was born and raised in Portland Oregon and attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art where he studied photography and printmaking and earned a BFA in photography in 2004. Five years later in 2009 Michael graduated with his MFA in printmaking from Northern Illinois University where he studied under Michael Barnes and Ashley Nason. Currently living and working both in Portland Oregon and Seattle Washington Michael McGovern continues to make work based in both printmaking and photography.




"Slumber" by Michael McGovern
18" x 23"
Mixed Media on Wood Panel
$500.00


See more work from Screen-Play!


Artist Statement:
The environments and people that have surrounded my life inform the art I create. My work is about constructing autobiographical images that explore the ghosts of my past. I am interested in how both personal and cultural histories have profoundly affected my visual language. I compose memorials to the intangible memories of my past. By visually recording impressions of specific times, places, and events in my life I am preserving memories that seem to fade with each passing year. My work calls upon the repetitive nature of photography and printmaking to create a network of reoccurring images that I can meditate on to help search for a truth. I use a lexicon of images that relate to specific events in my history. Repeated images of bridges, birds, trains, war, urban landscapes, and old family portraits find their way into my work lending themselves to an unfolding narrative. All these images carry a personal biography, but also carry the weight of their own metaphors helping to furnish an ever-growing personal narrative.


http://www.bherdstudios.com/
Gallery Hours: Wed - Fri from 12-6pm and by appointment.