Michael Downs was born in Skipton, England. He studies at Bath Acadeny of Art where he was awarded a BA (Hons) in 1976. He emigrated to Australia in 1991 and was awarded an MFA (First Class) from the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1994.

He has exhibited his striking and unusual shaped paintings in over 70 solo shows and 300 group shows in twenty countries including the Pompidou Centre, Paris, the Centro de Cultura Contemporanea, Barcelona, the Barbican Centre, London. the Museum of Contemporary Art, Beijing, and the Osaka Triennale of Painting in Japan. 

He was Head of Postgraduate Studies at The National Art School, Sydney until 2010. He has also been a visiting lecturer at more than fifty art schools, including the Royal College of Art, London, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Statens Kunstakademi, Oslo

His paintings have feature in two major surveys of twentieth century art; ‘La Ville’, the definitive survey of urban landscape art between 1900 and 2000 held at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and ‘Dreams in Twentieth Century Art’ in New York in 2002.

For the last 15 years he has travelled very extensively in Asia creating and exhibiting his Asian Urban Energies series and has worked and exhibited in Beijing, Guangzhou, Kunming, Hong Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Seoul, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Phnom Penh.