Like Paul Nash, whose work he admires, his romance is lyrical but not sugary. He never strays far from his quest for genius loci.m With his water-colours, inks , pencils and chalks he has searched the open hills and skies and the closed valleys and thickets. The spirits of these are his daemons.He uses drawing from observation only as a starting point, preferring to make paintings in his studio where he can distill his observations and use his colours freely. His present medium, watercolour, is sadly underused by contemporary painters. Michael enjoys its unexptectedness and the challenge of making use of the impluses of the paint itself.