Room with a view of Mike Arnold’s artwork. It is titled Voyage Afloat.

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

Mike Arnold, Dubai-based artist, launched Odyssey, his new, exclusive and unseen collection dedicated to the journey that we take through life, both physically and spiritually (Mar. 5 – 27) at Mestaria Gallery.

For Arnold, it is a larger journey, personified by the incredible progress of the UAE. He paid a tribute to it in his distinctive impressionist style.  Odyssey saw Mike paint monochromatic scenes, inspired by a deep connection to the UAE’s richness - its history, people, and dramatic natural environment.

His canvas is a platform where he interprets the atmosphere of life’s experiences and journeys in the Emirates. He exposes the unique light reflected both in familiar locales alongside spectacular, distant landscapes and intimate personal moment and his paintings are structured to bring forward the feelings of remote imagery to the present space.

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Painted with a palette knife, the artworks are extremely striking; black on white with the occasional flourish of gold leaf.

They have you leaning in to explore and enjoy their incredible details; undulating desert landscapes and caravans, coastal life above and below the blue Gulf waters, and life portraits of a wizened and weathered adventurer. They were all part of his exhibition.

The new body of work sees him chasing the light and energy of life’s journey that has transformed the nation: he captures it to reveal the essence of many hard-earned lessons. He enjoys exploring with different materials and his practice now extends across oil-on-canvas, oil-on-glass, mono prints, oil sticks and oil-on-paper.

 Mike Arnold calls this work Crossing.

He also tries to push his boundaries by moving away from precise renditions of subjects, to embracing a looser form that allows for creativity to flourish. There is no overriding theme to his work other than a life-long passion dedicated to light. His attempt to chase and capture light is what marries all his work and with that, he attempts to convey emotion to his viewers.

“My art is an expression of my spirit as well as the energy I see in other people, animals or buildings,” he says. “I have always been intrigued by eyes and I see their ability to capture light as something that I also aspire to with my work.

“I choose to paint animals because I am very interested in form, anatomy and muscular structure and there is something truly majestic about horses: so full of power and energy. “My other subjects are based on exploring my surroundings and expressing them through colour and form; I am interested in motion and energy and capturing the moment.  “I don’t want to be too didactic with my art - I hope that my viewers can have their own conversation with my pieces, be drawn in and experience something intriguing, whilst looking at it.”

Arnold himself has had an incredible journey in the UAE. In 2012, he completed his 40-year career in architecture to pursue a lifelong passion for painting and exchanged his drawing board for an easel and his design office for an artist’s studio.  He works from Villa #10, his studio in Dubai’s Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.  Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, he began his art career at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, studying with fine arts instructors and art historians.  He later studied architecture and rendering in Italy and the USA, where he mastered perspective and structure - which is a strong foundation in his works today. 

After completing his four decade old architectural career with offices in New York, Philadelphia, Doha and Dubai, he decided to pursue a lifelong passion for painting.  He is an avid student and studied under Trevor Waugh and in Nelson and Leona Shank’s Studio Incamminati. One of the first steps Arnold took towards his career as an artist was embarking on a six-month apprenticeship with Waugh, an internationally known British watercolour painter, who took him under his wing after a short course in Dubai.

Waugh works in an impressionistic, loose artistic style that brings light and life to his subjects, including scenes from the Middle East. Modelled on the traditional Italian accademia and French atelier, Studio Incamminati is a Contemporary Realist art school in Philadelphia, whose curriculum blends classical traditions of the Renaissance era masters, luminous colour of the Impressionists and a contemporary sensibility. The school’s name is filled with symbolism. In Italian, “Incamminati” means “moving forward”; it invokes the spirit of its namesake studio founded by Renaissance artist, Annibale Carracci.

Arnold also recently learned the source of his passion is as much ancestral as vocational, upon discovering Samuel Cahan, prominent artist and portrait painter, is his grandfather.   He has lived in the Middle East for two decades, drawing inspiration from the people and the power of the region, and exploring life’s meaning through the journeys here.  He is part of the Tashkeel Art Community, where he participates as an active member and teaches art at Mawaheb From Beautiful People. 

His works are collected by the Middle East region’s leading art collectors and are displayed in royal palaces, governmental and corporate headquarters and in Four Seasons, St. Regis and Address hotels. They can also be found in collections across the US and Europe. Mestaria Gallery (formerly Showcase) is a contemporary art space located in Alserkal Avenue Art District in Al Quoz, Dubai. First established as a gallery space in the UAE in the 1990s, it specialises in works from regional and global talent, with a specific focus on work of an Arabic, African and Asian origin.