Michael Kirwan
(b. 27 December 1953 - d. 26 May 2018)
(bio from Kirwanarts.com)
Michael lived a life filled with joys, passions, family, friends, and art. Michael resided in New York, New York; Miami, Florida; and most recently, Los Angeles, California. Creating his art was his most passionate activity, but he also enjoyed socializing, cooking, intimate encounters, movies, sharing his opinions, and being an astute observer and recorder of life.
While Michael’s artistic talents surfaced early, life had a way of forcing real-world responsibilities on a young Michael. Yes, he was married early in his life and was pleased to have fathered a son. As Michael was reaching his late twenties, his marriage ended, and he began a new, queer life that brought comfort within himself and adventures that would make for raucous stories for decades to come.
Michael always had a gift for telling and writing stories, but it was his illustrations and drawings that would give his friends and fans the clearest window into Michael’s thoughts and his heart. His first published work of art appeared in PlayGuy magazine in 1980, and getting paid to create art was Michael’s sweetest dream come true. Through the late 1980s until the mid-2000s, Michael’s highly detailed and evocative art was published in more than 600 magazines. There were periods of the 1990s when Michael’s art appeared in as many as six different magazines per month. The artwork was gay, straight, fetish, hardcore, and promotional to illustrate fiction, comics, and real life. Michael was incredibly prolific, and his talent grew and became more and more popular with fans, readers, and art collectors.
Michael’s works of art have appeared in galleries and exhibitions around the world. After moving to California, he spent a year as the Artist in Residence with the Tom of Finland Foundation. Michael enjoyed an inspirational relationship with the work and history of Tom and a very supportive relationship with the people of his Foundation, who are dedicated to the education and preservation of erotic art for all artists. These years would provide Michael with the most important friendships and partnerships, and during this time, Michael created the best work of his life. Through that association, Michael appeared at internationally attended events and exhibitions that brought new admirers to his work and his Grand Persona as an artist.
Collectors with great taste and savvy expertise from across the globe have purchased Michael’s original works. After the adult magazine publishers faltered against the internet, Michael drew for his pleasure, to pay rent, and for fans commissioning unique and always interesting erotic scenes via his website KirwanArts.com. Michael always felt he was visually documenting every variety and scenario in gay and straight sexual activities. His inspirations for drawing his characters came from the everyday, regular people he would encounter on the streets, on the bus, throughout parks and markets, in seedy bars, and in dark alleys where names were not exchanged, but furtive fun was found. Michael’s drawings exposed the fevered excitement and erotic beauty in everybody and face. Michael always said he did not draw “pretty” guys because he knew regular guys had better sex.
Selections of Michael’s works have appeared in numerous books, but a highlight for him came in 2011 as a broad retrospective of his paintings was published in a monograph book titled Just So Horny. The obvious theme tying the works together was Michael’s obsessive attention to details, patterns, and backgrounds. The characters he drew were front and center, but Michael gave them life in a rich and colorful environment he painted on paper as he created the elaborate backstories in his head. Much of Michael’s work was created with fine-point watercolor brushes, making thin lines and blending an abundance of colors and layers, to make fantasies filled with his humor and wry sense of style leaping from the page. Michael rarely drew in front of anyone because he preferred solitude as he worked hunched over an art pad straining and crossing his eyes as he would create minute details and repeating patterns as fabrics and tile works setting a stage for his horny creations.
Michael wanted everyone to buy erotic art (most notably his, of course) and hang it where it should be seen by all.
Please visit Michael's website to purchase prints from his estate. www.Kirwanarts.com