Mike Connell was brought up in the New town of Harlow in Essex and was educated at Mark Hall technical school gaining his A levels in art and in ceramics, which led him to Bretton Hall College of art, where he gained his training and teaching qualifications. While there he developed his knowledge and skills in fine art, painting and drawing, ceramics, sculpture and art history, through his studies with Sir Herbert Read, Austin Wright, Reg Hazel, Derek Andrews and Dorothy Kemp.

Since then he has successfully taught these subjects in a variety of schools, but for the last 30 years as Head of Art in Hall Mead school, a well known London comprehensive where he also became head of Creative studies involving himself in drama music and dance and PE. Thus influencing the artistic lives of hundreds of students over the years

In his late teens he became heavily involved in the sailing and the natural environment of the East coast, which became the main spring of inspiration for his art concentrating on fine line pen and ink sketching and oil painting. He spent a great deal of his time on many different sailing craft including fishing smacks, yachts and barges. In the late 1960s he became the owner of the S/b Beatrice Maud which he rerigged and fitted out as his home and seagoing studio thus developing an intimate knowledge of the structure and nature of the craft, the sea, water, sky and the whole environment that has become such a large part of his art and life.

He sees his art as developing through the careful observation of all things around him and the interaction between them and his imagination. Because of the nature of his profession the influences of different styles and genres of the subject have had profound effects on his work. His use of colour is bold and often uncompromising in lively well-considered compositions, a hallmark of Cscape. He says “I love to explore colour for its own sake, and to feel my way into its values in expressing light, depth and atmosphere particularly with strong media changes in the more abstract compositions”

Over the years Mike has been commissioned to paint many subjects ranging from his sea and landscapes to animals and pets, plants, gardens, interiors and the occasional portrait and within these he shows great sensitivity towards detail. He has exhibited locally and has sold privately in a reduced capacity for many years, much of his work going to overseas buyers. He is now looking forward to exhibiting on a more regular basis and over a wider range of subject matter. His latest enthusiasm for the city of Venice has led to many new works.

He enjoys the company of other artists and runs a small art group in his village of Goldhanger, where he has his studio. He has recently decided to continue his professional work marketing it under the name of
C Scape.