MICHAEL SMITH

– CHEF’S KITCHEN –

An Exhibition of Ingredients

Private View / Evening Reception
6-9pm Thursday 9th November

The exhibition continues to
5pm Saturday 2nd December

I first met Michael in my early days at Abbott and Holder when he came in pursuing some drawings from a Robert Medley sketchbook. His enthusiasm for pictures and picture making stood out to me then. And, unabated, it continues to stand out today. I am sure visitors to this exhibition will recognise this enthusiasm, and see that his beautiful still-lifes are as much a celebration of painting as they are of food.

Michael was trained at the Royal West of England Academy (1989-90) and at Leeds Metropolitan University (1990-93). When he was a teenager, Anthony Eyton was his artist-hero. In art school it was Robert Medley, who was to become a friend as well as a major influence. Michael’s work then, descends directly from that Euston Road / Camberwell tradition of tonal painting that Eyton and Medley were part of. Through Medley, Michael was also introduced to David Hockney and he made a number of trips to L.A. in the 1990s, learning a great deal about painting and picture making in the process.

Michael has exhibited in group shows at Paul Stolper, Anthony Hepworth and Browse and Darby, and has held solo shows at the Groucho Club and Pictorum Gallery. His artistic life has been paralleled by a life in food. He worked at the Groucho Club for many years, then in 2005 joined St John where he works front-of-house and where many of you will recognise him from. As his paintings show, Michael – like all good chefs and restaurateurs – is both passionate and serious about food. His works are always painted from life; at home in London, in the Kitchens of St John, or in Spain where many of these works were made. Nothing is wasted; that which he enjoys painting is cooked, and eaten … and enjoyed again.

Tom Edwards (Managing Director, Abbott and Holder Ltd)

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Time plays funny games, unlike beautiful and touching paintings like these still-lifes which, in the gallery or on your wall – whoever reads these little words – are there for a kind of forever…

I can’t remember when young and very tall Michael Smith came into my life, except I know that a long time ago he reached out to me whilst he was writing his dissertation on the art of the wonderful and today far too little-known painter, and a great deal older and wiser friend of mine, Robert Medley (1904 -1994). Perhaps thanks to my introduction Michael was able to meet his hero just before his death. Robert was, during his lifetime as a teacher at the Slade and at Camberwell, but above all as a painter, a very well-known and admired figure in the London art world and in the broader, cultural, mostly gay-orientated world. Bacon, Hockney, Maggi Hambling, Derek Jarman were all closely connected to Robert, who could even remember Diaghilev! Michael, from the perspective of his English provincial art school, somehow hit upon Medley, came to London, and over the last decades has with persistence carved for himself a painting world largely centred around the consciously modest genre of the still-life. 

The still-life is of course rooted in a deliberately “humble” tradition that looks back to the likes of Chardin, Goya and Cezanne and more recently David Hockney. Colour and Perceived Form is of their essence. Michael knows and has looked at food a lot. He works too in one of London’s most deliciously English restaurants. I have a beautiful painting by him of a knife. My sister has acquired several of his works. They record as though for ever that which is otherwise ephemeral. They are not perhaps fashionable in terms of art today, art that hopelessly aims to solve the problems of this unjust world. But they are, in fact, no less real and relevant for all that.

David Hockney (who has painted portraits of Michael) has a current motto: “Love Life!’’. Michael, through his paintings, tells us to “Love Still-Life!”, to love that lamb chop or artichoke, which is indeed beautiful and precious to look at each day. For were it not for painting, Michael’s paintings, would just be gone!

Norman Rosenthal, 31st October 2023

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“The great joy that is Michael, a dear friend for many years. When not treading the boards at St John, Michael has been quietly applying brushes to canvases delighting in all manner of produce be they quince, lobster or a knob of butter. They are a joy to behold.”
(Jeremy Lee, Quo Vadis)

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