His painting

Michael Bastow works away furiously at painting women in varying degrees of beauty to give them what they do not have: his desire. He represents them freed of their function, beyond aesthetics, where social constraint tries tirelessly to trap them, without taking into account the hierarchy of values established by others.
With each, he finds the candor of his archaic view, the force of primary emotion. Indeed, his pastel technique became finer over the years - to the point of becoming prodigiously complex, but his masterful execution never distracts him from the initial wonder that is discovery; rather, it serves and supports it.

Extract from a text by Roland Topor