Ink and paint on paper
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Michael Lindsay-Hogg, 2020, Conversation on a Sunday Morning, ink and paint on paper, 10 x 9 in
ARTIST STATEMENT
‘Seems to me like a conversation two people might be having on a Sunday morning, as old friends might.’ That’s what I have to say about it. So maybe call it: ‘Conversation on a Sunday morning.’
BIOGRAPHY
Michael Lindsay-Hogg (Los Angeles) Writer, Director, TV, films and theatre, Rock and Roll videos with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who, wrote a memoir, ‘Luck and Circumstance’, at work on a second. Artist, had a successful show of drawings and paintings at Galerie Pixi in Paris last year.
Michael Lindsay-Hogg needs little introduction because, without him, much of what has shaped our world may not have happened. This artist has had a fascinating career in show business as well as the arts. On stage, he directed productions of Agnes of God on Broadway, and Normal Heart at Public Theatre in New York along with receiving a Best Director Tony Nomination for Whose Life is it Anyway?
At the age of twenty-four, he was directing the British live rock n’roll TV show, Ready, Steady, Go,
In his own words,
“When I was 24 ‘driven by ambition, cushioned by innocent optimism, having learned guile and been blessed with luck’, I found myself directing the greatest ever live TV rock n’ roll show, ‘Ready Steady Go!’, on which participating bands were The Rolling Stones, The Who, Kinks, Small Faces, with Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, The Walker Brothers and the visiting Americans – The Supremes, Miracles, Four Tops, Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, James Brown, Paul Simon. As a result of the attention the show received, I was asked to direct the earliest videos, then called promos. First with The Beatles, then The Rolling Stones. I did 4 with The Beatles and worked with The Rolling Stones for 15 years.” – Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Lindsay-Hogg continued to direct groundbreaking videos with The Beatles, with hits like RevoluJon, Hey Jude, and in 1969, The Beatles’ documentary, ‘Let It Be’, which climaxes with the famous ‘Concert on the Roof’. During those fifteen years with The Rolling Stones, he
directed Paint it Black, Respectable, Waiting on a Friend, Jumping Jack Flash, It’s Only Rock N' Roll and the historically witty, The Rolling Stones Rock N’ Roll Circus and more.
His direction in film and television has been nominated for 5 BAFTA Awards, winning for Brideshead Revisited. He wrote and directed, The Object of Beauty with John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell, which won Best Picture and Best Director awards at the Cairo International Film Festival. Also, Frankie Starlight with Anne Parillaud, Gabriel Bryne and Matt Dillion, which was voted by Jeffrey Lyons and Siskel & Ebert as on their Top 10 pictures of the year. His film, Waitng for Godot was part of the Beckett series which won the award for Best TV Drama on British arts program, The South Bank Show. The list goes on and on.
After years of reflection, Lindsay-Hogg wrote a memoir about his childhood and early adult life, Luck and Circumstance - A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond. Which includes detailed descriptions of how as a small boy he was in the company of Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst, and playing hide and seek with Olivia de Havilland as well as serving drinks to Humphrey Bogart and discussing the meaning of life with Henry Miller. This doesn’t seem too far out when the author mentions his mother was the Irish actress, Geraldine Fitzgerald, who received instant acclaim as Bette Davis’s best friend
in Dark Victory. Fitzgerald was also in William Wyler’s Wuthering Heights and spent time with Hollywood’s elite, Laurence Olivier, Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles with whom she worked within New York at the Mercury Theatre and in other productions.
Growing up among these great talents, how could Lindsay-Hogg not become a fountain of brilliance? Thankfully, I was given the opportunity to interview the artist about how he nurtures his creative pursuits, as well as where his visual language may stem from. Lindsay- Hogg has been no stranger to the art world. Even while in the depth of his directorial endeavors, he has made time to exhibit his work globally. Over the past few years, his paintings and drawings have regularly been on display in London, Paris, New York, and Los Angeles.
“In the last 20 years or so, maybe because of a sense of stability that my marriage has given me, and also I’ve got a place to do it, I’ve started with oils, and I still draw every day, and there are several thousand by now.” — Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Finally, the artist’s paintings have been widely collected, and are in the private collections of, (partial listing), Mr. and Mrs. Rodolphe Von Hofmannsthal, Mr. and Mrs. Julian Sands, Nona Summers, Tara Summers, Jean Marsh, Wes Anderson, Leslie Nasser, Marc Kristal, Jane Moseley, Wendy Goodman, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Mr. and Mrs. Richard Finkelstein