Michael Hales is an abstract artist based in County Tipperary, Ireland. Born and raised in Maidenhead in the United Kingdom, he now lives in Newchapel where he works from his own studio.

He studied Fine Art at Margaret Street, Birmingham School of Art and Design in the early 1990s and recently completed an MA by Research at the University of Limerick.

Hales’ work explores the relationship between landscape, architecture and the passage of time. His practice is informed by artists such as Mark Bradford, Vija Celmins, Julie Mehretu, Sean Scully and Hughie O’Donoghue. Through a materially driven process, his paintings examine the tension between time and perception, where images emerge, dissolve and remain as fragments within the surface of the work.

Michael Hales works primarily with encaustic, combining beeswax, damar resin and pigment to build layered abstract surfaces. Heat, scraping and carving are used to fuse and rework each layer, allowing earlier marks to remain partially visible beneath the surface. Through this process the paintings develop slowly, revealing underlying strata and traces of previous gestures.

The resulting surfaces carry a sense of depth and accumulation, reflecting the processes of erosion, weathering and change found in the landscape.

Michael Hales’ practice sits between painting, landscape and architectural memory. His work is shaped by an interest in ruins and the shifting relationship between permanence and impermanence within the built and natural environment.

Through layered abstraction and experimental processes, he explores how structures, surfaces and places change over time. Fragments of form appear and dissolve within the material of the painting, reflecting the quiet erosion and resilience that shape both landscape and memory.