Artist focus - Mike Smith on Mike Smith

Mike pokes his head round the door briefly and says for me to come in. He is smoking a roll up and doesn't want to stink out the flat so disappears onto the balcony leading off the kitchen. The second floor flat on a crumbling street in Hulme could be a set on shameless. Abandoned cars lie in drives and four floors of post war architecture make it clear this is a rough part of town. Mike Smith is an artist, but he also an alcoholic. The two are incompatible.

This is something very difficult for me to write about because it is story of extraordinary waste. Someone who approached me 2 months ago with some paintings which impressed me has since fallen off the wagon. Not knowing his problems I was compelled to show his work, how can I possibly refuse my namesake?

My 1st visit was to his girlfriends house in Chorlton. It was here I realised he was more than just a very talented painter, he was, and still is, a creative genius. I don't use these words lightly and haven't used them before but am certain of their use at this point.

Mike has shown with some great galleries and has sold a lot of work to a lot of people. Never have I met someone who painting is as easy as taking a walk. He can knock out a painting in a day that many other artists would strain for a week over. Its effortless, and it leaves him with excess room in his brain to fill with strange and dark thoughts.

In the flat he offers me a drink, I accept a cup of tea. He makes it and then says he has no milk and that I don't have to drink it. He apologises and curses himself for being an idiot and a loser. He does that a lot.

It was in his little kitchen with him still smoking when I asked how things were going. I knew something was up because in the two months since we met he hadn't produced any more artwork despite being in a new exhibition next week. He told me that fairly soon after our conversations "Emmesse" slipped back into his old ways.

On the 26th June, mooch art was 1 year old and I invited all the artists out for a few drinks. Mike wanted to be involved in a normal social drink but he told me that he stood outside watching us laughing and drinking through the pub window but tragically couldn't bring himself to step inside and sit there with a coke.

Emmesse (Mike Smith) is a caricature of the tortured artist. At first I wasn't sure whether to believe his story, but it has been confirmed by others close to him. He revels in the poetic destruction of his life. When he is drunk he says he thinks he can be like David Bowie, an artist, a madman a creative force to be reckoned with. In truth he is everything but.

Mike knows this of course. His rational side knows damn well just what impact he is having on himself and those around him. He is incredibly open, honest and articulate about his situation and I can't help but like the guy. I expect others have fallen for his childlike qualities mixed with lucid intelligence. But everyone, it seems, finds that the alter ego is too much to deal with. His girlfriend threw him out of her house a week ago and the flat we are in is his own but he now shares it with his former tenant.

Artists have always had an alternate view on reality and some have had a very tentative grip upon it. I have always loved the work of Caravaggio. A renaissance painter who was as unstable and dangerous as he was talented. The dramatic and dark paintings still have massive power and resulted from this incredible mind. Modern day Caravaggios are being born today.

He talks me through some of his paintings, many of which were done to articulate his remorse at being a drunk and many to tackle his overwhelming fear of death. The work is brilliant, but it is stacked like pieces of rubbish in his bedroom. He says he should just chuck them all in the skip, he has done this before. Many pieces are typical landscapes, very skilfully painted without a trace of his personality. Others are malevolent, dark and foreboding pieces with meaning in every brush stroke. The curtains are closed despite it being a bright sunny day. I ask whether he enjoys painting. He pauses and thinks about it. He says he doesn't enjoy it in the conventional sense but he feels it is necessary.

He asks whether I still believe in him. I say I do but its really up to him not me. I'm no shrink, no counsellor. I wonder whether I said too much, or didn't say enough. Whether listening is enough or whether firm guidance is needed. I don't know, and from what I have heard, many people close to him don't either.

So why should I write this about him you ask? Well maybe If people know about this he can be helped. Treating your body to a course of 14 pints of special brew isn't a recipe for a long life. Mike knows this and thinks he will be dead within a year. Whether this is dramatic I can't be sure but It still leaves me with a lot to think about.