artist statement
I am fascinated by the transformative relationship between painting, photography and memory.
A personal photographic archive is the starting point for my work – images from the close and distant past that persist in my thoughts and continue to resonate.
Working from a single image, or combination of images, I use these to provide a narrative framework to blur the distinction between reality and fiction. A place where the imagined merges with the real, where the paintings produced ask certain questions.
The transition from the photographic into painting can heighten or dissolve the image, can take apart and rebuild; and in the process say something about the nature of memory – its’ strength, fragility and mystery.
For me, the fundamental question is how persistent and reliable are our memories without images? Memories that often fragment until what remains is what I tell myself and what I paint.
artist bio
Mark grew up in Londons’ East End where he played guitar in local bands and studied Politics at Guildhall University.
On moving to Canterbury in the early 1990’s, he graduated in Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art & Design, beginning a career as an artist and teacher, working in Further and Adult Education and maintaining studios in Canterbury, Faversham and now Whitstable.
Mark has regularly exhibited in London and the South East
artist gallery
