The Lost
MICHAEL DOLE
The Lost
2017
Artist Michael Dole’s The Lost (2003) is a small, uncompromising painting about the violence of looking – and what happens when that violence turns inward. A young woman sits almost nude on a low stool, folded in on herself, her face swallowed by a curtain of hair. Her body is rendered with forensic tenderness, but it is not an erotic image; this is the posture of someone braced for impact. Behind her, a toxic band of acid yellow slices through the frame like hazard tape between soft flesh and a hard, unforgiving world.
Read through the lens of bulimia nervosa, Lost becomes a portrait of an illness that is as political as it is personal. The figure is literally caught between the furniture of a domestic interior and the brutal stripe of colour that suggests the glare of advertising, screens and the endless parade of “ideal” bodies. The external pressure to be smaller, neater, more digestible has been internalised; obsession and guilt have nowhere to go but back into the body itself. Dole refuses to tidy this up or make it pretty. Instead, he offers a quiet indictment of a culture that would rather police women’s outlines than confront the systems making them sick.
Details
Artist Michael Dole’s The Lost is a raw early work that confronts bulimia, body politics and the damage done when outside expectations are swallowed whole. A single seated figure, turned away from us, becomes a stand-in for anyone who has been measured and found wanting by someone else’s scale. It is a difficult painting, deliberately so – a reminder that disordered eating is not an individual failing, but a mirror held up to a disordered world.
MICHAEL DOLE
'The Lost' 2003
Acrylic on canvas
49cm x 59cm
Edition: Unique original (1/1)
Orientation: Landscape
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Artist Michael Dole is a rare hybrid of director, filmmaker and artist whose practice has unfolded over more than three decades and across four continents. Now based in the Byron Bay Hinterland, he moves fluently between set and studio, allowing each discipline to infect the other. His films carry the stillness and compositional rigour of painting, while his paintings feel charged with the tempo, rhythm and emotional cadence of cinema. The result is a body of work preoccupied less with spectacle than with the subtle pressure points of lived experience – the quiet, often overlooked moments where a life tilts.
Critically, Dole’s work resists cynicism. Whether he is collaborating with global musicians or developing intimate fine art series, his focus remains on the inter lives of people and the worlds they inhabit. Exhibiting locally and internationally, and increasingly mentoring the next generation of image-makers, he uses each project as an inquiry into how we see and how we are seen. At the core of his practice is a insightful, demanding ambition. To create work that meets people where they are, tells the truth about being human and stays with you long after you have walked away.
SHIPPING & DELIVERY
All artworks are shipped from the Byron Bay Hinterland, Australia, securely packed and fully insured in transit.
Within Australia we offer a flat Standard Shipping rate of $50 AUD, with delivery generally 2 to 8 business days from dispatch.
For customers outside Australia, Standard International shipping is available at a flat rate of $150 AUD, with delivery typically 5 to 9 business days from dispatch.
You will receive tracking details as soon as your artwork leaves the studio so you can follow its journey to you.
International customers are responsible for any local customs duties or taxes that may apply in their country.