MICHAEL CUSACK

An Intuitive Engagement with Paint and Surface

“We often hear it said that it is the task of art to express the inexpressible: it is contrary which must be said (with no intention of paradox): the whole task of art is to unexpress the expressible, to kidnap from the world’s language, which is the poor and powerful language of the passion, another speech, an exact speech.”

– Roland Barthes

About The Artist

Born in Dublin in 1960, Michael Cusack’s journey into painting began with a quiet migration—both geographic and internal. He moved to Australia in 1982, eventually settling in Byron Bay, where he continues to live and work, grounded in a practice that has unfolded over decades with a steady, searching intensity.

Cusack’s work emerges from an intuitive dialogue between gesture, material, and perception. His paintings are not fixed images but evolving fields—layered, reworked, and negotiated—where colour, form, and surface seem to test their own limits. There is a sense that each work is discovered rather than imposed, shaped through a process that is as physical as it is contemplative.

Holding a Master of Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Cusack has built a deeply considered practice that balances formal rigour with a sensitivity to instinct and experience. His paintings have been widely exhibited and collected, finding their way into major public and corporate collections such as Artbank, BHP Billiton, Macquarie Bank, and the Newcastle Art Gallery, as well as numerous private collections across Australia, Europe, and Asia.

Over time, his work has come to be recognised for its ability to hold tension—between control and release, structure and emergence, surface and depth. Each painting carries traces of its own making, revealing a sustained engagement with the act of painting itself. In Cusack’s hands, paint is not merely a medium but a site of inquiry: a way of thinking through sensation, memory, and the rhythms of the natural world.

Presently, Cusack continues to develop a body of work that is both grounded and searching—anchored in material yet open to the unknown.

Ana:

Your paintings seem exist between or intentionally emergence and dissolution-do you feel you are capturing fleeting moments or intentionally resisting resolution?

M. Cusack:

When is a painting finished is a question that presents itself often in the studio. There is a sort of closure when one thinks of finishing a painting. I prefer to move between completion and the painting remaining open-ended, the painting retaining an ambiguous presence or identity. Things remain open. When is enough enough?

Questions around illusion, perspective, and making pictures. Homage to the minimal.

Ana:

There is a strong sense of time embedded in your surfaces, almost like traces of previous decisions remain visible. How important is memory-both personal and painterly in your work?

M. Cusack:

The painting process lends itself to all sorts of visual identity. When working in layers you do get traces of what was there before. One can cover up or paint over trace marks. How is time measured in a painting? While painting hits you straightaway the good ones tend to linger in the mind. Formally you could say the combination of forms and shapes are present in the painting, but they suggest other things. Paintings are sort of timeless. They are present but linger.

Ana:

Your process appears both intuitive and physical. Do you ever feel that the painting takes control, and if so, how do respond to that loss of authorship?

M. Cusack:

I don’t really plan a painting, other than deciding on a surface and size. Most of the layers are intuitive—an engagement with paint and surface. I think most often I am trying to give over control. I see unconscious and conscious mark-making as part of the process, so I dip in and out of that. I tend not to worry about the loss of authorship; I see it as part of the process. I quite like the accident. Sometimes I see the process as a whole bunch of accidental marks.

Ana:

Having moved from Ireland to Australia, how has this geographical and cultural shift shaped your perception of landscape and your emotional connection to place?

M. Cusack:

I don’t think you can escape from where you grew up, nor would I want to. So if we understand painting to be sort of autobiographical (which I do), then it’s embedded with histories and influences. My memories of certain things in Ireland are as strong as memories here in Australia. It’s selective, of course, but such is memory. There is a great literary tradition in Ireland, and I do absorb that in my work—a sense of poetry and absurdity, so to speak.

Ana:

Your work often suggests landscapes without defining them. Are these spaces drawn from real experiences, or do they emerge more from internal states?

M. Cusack:

I moved to Bundjalung Country (Northern New South Wales) a number of years ago, which brought about a big change in my work. I was making abstract landscape paintings because of the landscape here. I drove through it every day and couldn’t get it out of my retinas. But I passed through that and returned to maybe a more ambiguous form of abstraction.

Ana:

The physicality of your brushwork suggests a direct engagement with the canvas. Does painting serve as a form of release, reflection or something else entirely for you?

M. Cusack:

I tend to start pacing before I begin a large painting, building up the energy to start and engage with the surface. Painting can be a very physical activity, especially on large works. On larger works, you have to work with your body a lot more, or at least your arms and shoulders. So it is a form of physical activity, and if you have been working for a couple of hours, it can be quite exhausting…

Ana:

Can you share how your early life or formative experiences influenced your decision to pursue painting, and whether those influences still resonate in your practice today?

M. Cusack:

I didn’t get to painting until late. I spent my early creative years taking photographs. I wandered the streets of Dublin, taking photographs of people and the architecture. I think I learnt a lot in doing that—ways of seeing; I learnt about colour that way. I worked in a photographic darkroom for 12 years, looking at images, correcting and cropping them.

Ana:

There is a sense of tension and instability in your compositions. Do these qualities reflect something personal or are they purely formal concerns?

M. Cusack:

Primarily they are formal concerns, as opposed to a personality trait. Although, if you dug a little deeper, you would find something akin to the work. I am suspicious of the first layer in a painting, so I tend to rework. I try not to go for the prize too early when making a painting (so to speak).

Ana:

Outside of painting, are there particular experiences, environments or routines that constantly feed into your creative process?

M. Cusack:

I read; I like music and most often have music playing in the studio. From punk to pop, classical to ambient and jazz—it depends on how I’m feeling. I also have a piano I mess around on. I like to get to the studio early, before the world is up, around 5 am. I find I can work then. I make a cup of tea, do some research, some tidying up, or start painting, etc.

Ana:

When you step back from your work-not as the artist, but as an individual. What do you hope your paintings reveal about you, if anything at all?

M. Cusack:

There are a few processes involved before one gets to that stage. There is deciding on the size of the painting. There is the painting of the canvas, where you are in direct dialogue with it (and this can take a while). Finally, the canvas talks back to you. New paintings take on a life of their own.

Paintings that end up being “finished” have an element of surprise about them—something new, new questions, a new position, as it were. I want the paintings to reveal things, to open up. They sometimes reveal a development in visual language, which is exciting.

It’s all by accident or through engagement in an abstract fashion. I always forget how I make a painting, so I have to start over every time.

More about Michael Cusack:

website: www.michaelcusack.net.au/

Instagram: @cusack2

MICHAEL CUSACK

An Intuitive Engagement with Paint and Surface

About The Artist

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MICHAEL CUSACK

An Intuitive Engagement with Paint and Surface

About The Artist

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