Mike Harvey was born in Bristol in 1946, and left school without qualifications. His drawings, which remain an essential part of his creative process, earned him a place on a two year commercial design course, which he left after eighteen months and began a five year apprenticeship with Bristol printers ESA Robinson in their design department; he left after four and three quarter years and worked as a builder until his recent retirement, whilst continuing to paint in his spare time.

His work was included in a group exhibition of young painters at the Arnolfini in Bristol in 1979 (when the Sunday Telegraph art critic Michael Shepherd picked him out as possibly ‘a major talent’) but despite exhibiting several times in the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, and in group shows in Bath, he had to wait 29 years for his first solo show at Chapel Row Gallery in Bath in 2008, when Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries Magazine referred to a ‘talent finally fulfilled it would seem.’

The artist lives and works near Chippenham in Wiltshire.