Michael Larry Simpson paints and arranges colored panels to calm and/or provoke the viewer  in a visual and emotional game of give and take. 

 

For the past two decades, Simpson has played this game with just four colored panels arranged side by side in a life-sized composition. Four colors, twenty-four color combinations, offer an ever-changing relationship between the art and the viewer. The art is always ready to play, it is up to the viewer to step right up and share their mood and their thoughts. Reflection, projection, absorption and provocation are just some of the outcomes Simpson seeks his art to impart during and after the engagement.

 

Simpson is also at play during the creative process. In his first phase, he paints, stains, dye and burnishes wood panels with color one at a time for the sheer pleasure of letting his intuition empty some amalgamation of hues he’s recently garnered or remembered from nature, fashion, art and design. The second phase is when Simpson plays with the many panels he’s created to find the composition of four that best suits his eye, that resonates with his current vision and that truly surprises and challenges him.  

 

The pieces work for Simpson as he sees the colors, the combinations and their relationships as metaphors for the dynamic juxtapositions of attitudes, beliefs, visions and emotions that he experiences in daily life. Those combined in one piece provides him with the interest to engage and interact in either with a quick walk by glance or with a considered ponderance in passive meditation or active discourse.