Mike Marriott
Mike Marriot
Team Leader and Tutor
The Essential School of Painting, London.
Mike’s life revolves around a combination of art and adventure. Mike has, from an early age, served in the Royal Navy as helicopter aircrew and survival instructor. This has given him the opportunity to operate, in joint services expeditions, in remote and hostile environments across the globe including the icy landscapes of Iceland, Greenland, Norway and the artic circle.
It at the royal navy that Mike started to take a serious interest in drawing and painting. He initiate interest centred about life on board warships and then extended to places he visited.
Rowing through the North-West passage
After leaving the Navy Mike worked in development training and logistical support for people operating in remote areas while expanding his mountaineering experience in the Alps, Northern Canada and Alaska before settling down to study Art at Loughborough. After graduating Mike worked as an illustrator.
This, however, didn’t last long. The lure of adventure beckoned sending him on a major expedition to sail a 16 foot open boat through the North West Passage with one other person before returning to Arctic Alaska to live, work and document life in a small Inupiat Eskimo village.
Arctic Landscape
by Mike Marriott
Two years later Mike returned to the United Kingdom to work as an illustrator punctuated with mountaineering trips throughout the UK and Europe. Its during this time that Mike’s interest in the fine art deepened with illustration taking the back burner. He took up part time studies at Edinburgh College of Art and Glasgow School of Art. His hunger for a more classical style of training prompted Mike to seek admission at the London Atelier of Representational Art where he studied under Anastaisia Pollard.
River Teith
By Mike Marriott
Oil on canvas 2015
Mike also works and teaches at the Glasgow School of Art, produces his own work and employs his vast outdoor experience as a Deputy Leader and Incident/Search Manager with Scotland’s Mountain Rescue team. He teaches and works with The Essential School of Painting as a team leader and art tutor.