User:Lemakoo

'LeMakoo.com represents Michael Wright (born 8th February 1966)',an artist and writer with a passion for expression in many forms. He has written and used illustrations in the media to portray and inform all over the world.

Born and raised in Sydney, he was fortunate to get a position at Fairfax Newspapers at an early age that influenced the rest of his life. From there, following in the footsteps of countless Australians he landed at Heathrow airport in London to pursue his ambitions. Once again he was fortunate in gathering a wide range of experience on a number of London's leading newspapers over a period of many years. 'The most fun I had was with the Daily Mirror, the office was full of energy, talent and drive and I found myself in many interesting situations.'

10 April 1992: A large IRA bomb explodes outside 30 St Mary Axe in the City of London. Wright was tasked with describing and drawing the entire incident for the Sunday Telegraph. Searching through the bomb crater gathering evidence with his camera and notepad in a scene of devastation, he noticed a small delicate ship sculpture in a glass case that had survived the blast totally intact, barely ten metres from the epicentre. 'The glass case was covered in debris,the roof of the building above it was missing, yet somehow this most fragile of things had survived.'

1993-94: Drawing front page political cartoons for The European. Major stories at that time were the Bosnian war, the referendums and negotiations forming the European Union and Russia coping with the fall of communism. 'I enjoyed drawing Russians in their big fur coats and hats, they were easily caricatured and instantly recognisable. Drawing cartoons about the war in Bosnia was tricky. I had to tread a fine line introducing humour into a subject filled largely with tragedy. I found that attacking politicians was always easy and I was delighted to receive correspondence from the public.'

Originally from Australia, Michael Wright lives now in Malta after a lifetime working with the largest media organisations in Sydney and London. Notably The Times of London and the Sydney Morning Herald.

His mission is simple, to capture beauty through art. All his art work can be viewed on www.lemakoo.com

Michael began his journey as an artist on The Sydney Morning herald in 1986. He since moved to London where he worked on The Times and the Daily Mirror eventually becoming a political cartoonist for The European. He has produced work for such names as Ferrari and Benetton.

Using only the finest, highest quality art materials available. Michael aspires to longevity in his paintings, to give them the chance of survival for hundreds of years.

Michael's work has been sold all over the world and sits in many private collections. His first solo show in the Isle Of Man was a sell out.

In Malta LeMakoo has exhibited his work at the Trade Fair, the Home Exhibition,the Phoenicia, the Palace and performed live oil painting demonstrations at Bay Street, Ideacasa and Touchstone Gallery.

Malta. An Australian Perspective Exhibition Review, by Justin Fenech.

The exhibition of that opened on the 20th May 2011 at the Phoenicia, is the latest in the series of the Australian painter, Michael Wright, perhaps one of the most exciting talents in the Maltese art scene so far. This latest exhibition perfectly captures Michael’s two greatest abilities: Consistency and Dynamism.

His style has become as recognizable as that of Van Gogh, or Mondrian, it is something purely his own, and more than a little exciting. His swirling backgrounds, dense with proud, bright reds, warm yellows, putting in the shade the scenes they depict. It is as if Mdina is basking in the shade of the colours! A submission of reality to the artistic mind.

In this exhibition he has turned his attention to the detailed, almost anthropological comparison of his adopted home, and his native land. This is as revealing as any historical study could be on the nature of our Islands. The humorous, yet profound way, which he unites scenes of Maltese life with those of Australia is quite eye-opening. Who would have thought Valletta and the Sydney Opera house could look so well together? The exciting, almost melancholy, unite the two realities effortlessly, by sheer force of colour. Reality is nothing more than colour,and distance is a colourful illusion.

The themes of the exhibition vary from the mystical to the tongue-in-cheek. I never before saw such a modern, hypnotic image of our sole Maltese saint, Dun Gorg Preca, smiling at me as he always did in the pictures I constantly saw in youth, but somehow looking like a Warholean superstar. Perhaps the church could do with this kind of modernization?

Then, who amongst us Maltese, are not accustomed to seeing the erious, morose, faces of our past Grand Masters, hanging from their opulent palaces of hidden corruption? Yet, who amongst us, could have ever thought to have seen a Knight bearing a gun? Associating a Knight with the Australian rogue, Ned Kelly, is a metaphor worthy www.lemakoo.comof Andre Breton! Sheer class.