Mary Mark
Mary
Mark has always been an artist. Trained as a painter and
printmaker during two bachelor degrees in the 1970s, she
taught herself handmade papermaking. In the last 15
years, she has been selling handmade papers, linocuts,
and oil pastels in and through 400 gallery and frames
shops throughout the U.S. and abroad. She has exhibited
in numerous museums, competitions, and received many
purchase awards including a recent one from Ohio
University in the State Percent-for-the-Arts program.
Throughout the summer and early fall, Mary travels the
mid-west from Milwaukee to Philadelphia presenting her
linoleum block prints and occasionally her other works
in juried outdoor art festivals. She lives and works out
of a 120-year-old church building in New Richmond, Ohio.
Mary's
first love is printmaking. In the early 1970s, she was
drawn to the printmaking studios by the smell of
benzene, kerosene, nitric, and all those toxins used in
etching metal or sensitizing limestone. Mary was totally
enthralled by the printing mystique; in order to make an
image work. The printmaker need carve, etch, or
otherwise prepare the matrix in however many steps the
chosen process requires. The printmaker is inevitably
separated from her visualization and must make the most
of the surprises encountered along the way. "Inspired by
Picasso' s reduction linocuts, I have been working at
this for 20 years now and have yet to conquer it.
Pitting negative and positive spaces against each other,
the image emerges from the block over months of carving
and printing multiple layers of color until it evolves
into the original idea."
Mary’s
oil pastels are a profusion of life’s accouterments and
fabrics, expanded contemporary still lifes, modern
living spaces, a frenzied assortment of brilliant colors
and textured patina composed into harmonious image that
speaks of tranquility and reflective reverie. They are
locations for and images of meditational quietude,
contemporary sanctuary for a modern world. Mary's work
is sometimes referred to as Matisse-like in her vivid
palette and somewhat funky perspective. Surfaces are
layered one on top of another, juxtaposing pattern on
pattern for a high energy, busy effect.
