Michael J Christie

Michael was born in Paisley Scotland and spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Barrhead. He was sent to the Camphill Rudolf Steiner school in Aberdeen between the ages of 6 to 10. After leaving this school, he continued his education at the Mary Russell School in Paisley until the age of 18 years old. 

During his time at School, Michael was tutored by the Scottish artist Doreen Davis, who helped to nurture his artistic talent for portraiture and even entered him into school exhibitions, in which he successfully sold his art. He even won first prize for an artwork which featured in the front cover of the 1997 Renfrewshire Council calendar.  

After leaving school, Michael continued his studies at Reid Kerr College (West College Scotland), Paisley and completed an HND in Graphic Design during 2006. During his studies, he exhibited at the Museum of Bags and Purses in Holland, the SECC and won first prize for Paisley Student Union mureal design competition. 

Despite not continuing his graphic designer undergraduate degree studies at Dundee University,  he continued to develope his artistic abilities which has seen him exhibit at various art venues including the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow 2019, the Unexpected Artist Gallery St Enoch Centre Glasgow,  the Glasgow Art Club 2022, the Big Art Show 2022 and 2023, Artboxy New York April 2023 and the Firefly Art Gallery Bo'ness 2022 -2023.  

As a gay artist who lives with the daily challenges of having autistic spectrum disorder, emotional unstable personality disorder and a red and green colour vision defect, this has not detered Michael from pursuing his artistic ambitions and seeking to inspire others to do what he has accomplished.

Michael continues to create new artworks and uses art as a means of helping his audience to understand how he experiences life through his artistic lense and aims to overcome stigmatising attitudes and strives for a peaceful world in which everyone can live in, free from prejudice and discrimination regadless of their background and life circumstances. 

I’m a mixed media artist/illustrator who chooses to express how I see the world using a wide verity of media. My main interests are portraiture and realism and being colour blind means I’m expressing my artworks through my own visual colour spectrum. From an early age I was always producing art and I’ve had several exhibitions at various venues including the Undxpected Artist Gallery in St Enoch Centre Glasgow, Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, 103 Trongate Glasgow and the Museum of Bags and Purses in Holland.  I completed an HND in Graphic Design in 2006 from Reid Kerr College in Paisley, UK.The various mental health challenges I’ve lived with give me the incentive to produce artworks and express myself visually and creatively and I aim to inspire others to do. I'm currently exhibiting artworks at the Firefly Art Gallery in Bo'ness.