Michael Batty is a painter that operates with a formal language arising from a microcosm of the particle world. The minimalist pieces speak with geometry and line, and explores the balance between order and chaos by introducing random elements to the tightly rendered surfaces. In a poststructuralist mode, using a non-traditional tool of a knife rather than a brush, Batty explores a tension, juxtaposing the hard edge of the knife with the soft flow of the paint, evoking a sense of infinity.

The artists builds up a webbed network of intersecting lines by cutting into the surface of the painting with a knife; creating thin ridges and minute grooves. The incised lines catch and divert the paint, creating a random ground of pigment with a shifting depth of colour to create quantum imagery. In these works, the artistic creation is an open-ended play of traces in which the work gives up to a new kind of beauty, one that is mobile and elusive. Each image with its cicatrix seems to deal with the physical world, but give no easy name to their places. Also detectable in the work is a similar sensibility to the work of the Futurists, in their attempt to capture movement depicting it so as to convey a sense of dynamism of the contemporary world. These works allow the artist to remain open to the effects of chance, thereby facing his void – activating it with incisions that now mark him, as much as the work he produces. This discovery process is ongoing and non-linear. One edits only to find that the trace of what has been erased has reappeared, indeed, given rise to the eternal return. Batty graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver in 1989 with a major in painting. He attended the renowned artist workshops in Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, and studied printmaking at The Art Institute at Capilano College in Vancouver. Batty’s paintings can be found in collections around the world, including the Waldorf Astoria in Beijing, China, W Guangzhou, China, Four Seasons, Dubai, UAE, and Bank of Montreal in Calgary and Toronto.