Michael Porter was born in Derbyshire which has been a continual source of inspiration. His early work until was based on an area of woodland, called Shining Cliffs, known to him since childhood. He would walk in the woods, making sketches and taking many photographs which would then be used as inspiration in the studio for his large canvases. He initially works on a large sheet of paper, often the same height as himself, on the floor before stretching the paper onto a canvas. He uses both oil and acrylic paint on the same picture with many different techniques to recreate textures, building up layer upon layer. In the late 1990s he moved to Cornwall, where the cliff faces, rocks and coastlines have become his main subject. His paintings have always shown a personal landscape and the artist’s relationship to it.