About Michael Taaffe

I’m an Irish artist working with the visual language of medieval manuscripts and the imaginative world of Tolkien. What interests me is how these pages were actually made—the structure underneath them, the decisions that give them balance, and the way ornament grows from something ordered and deliberate. That’s the part of the tradition that speaks to me, and it’s where my own work begins.

Before there’s any colour or decoration, I’m laying out the underlying geometry. Proportion, alignment, rhythm—those are the things that hold a page together. I work with simple tools: a compass, a straightedge, a pencil. I build the design in layers until the structure feels stable. Only then do I move into linework, interlace, and the more expressive parts of the piece. It’s slow work, but it’s the kind of work that makes sense to me.

Everything I make is drawn by hand. No shortcuts, no digital tricks—just a patient, layered process that respects the craft behind the manuscripts I admire. I’m not trying to recreate the past or decorate the present. I’m trying to make new work that feels grounded and intentional, and built with the same respect for structure that shaped those older pages.