Mark Painter

Paintings

My paintings are usually concerned with colour for the most part and often use the idea of probability and quantum mechanical principals as their layout or structure. They are made in a succession of layers, in the form of grids or matrixes and edited with colour washes. I make judgements about what to leave in and what to leave out based on the emotional response I am searching for.

Fences

When I was at St Martins studying painting, I build a barricade or fence in my studio which I shared with several other people. This was to cordone off and seclude a section of the studio so I could work privately and un observed. It was made of wood salvaged from the skips of Soho. I used to paint on canvas on the opposing wall and cleaned my brushes out on this wooden structure. As time went on the structure/fence/barricade started to develop into an artwork in its own right. This led to me making several deliberate fences and these structures have been present in my work ever since. I still look at these as defensive structures that protect my inner thoughts from the viewing public, so in some senses they are not artworks at all. Between 2006 and 2010 I painted a series of these fences that I called 'The Autobiography Fence" with one fence representing every year of my life up to the age I got married to Jackie. Thirty two pictures in all as the first one covered the first three years. These were exhibited as a continuous fence at the Birley Center in Eastbourne in 2010.

Splinter Groups

Just as the Fences developed accidentally. The Splinter Groups also seemed to make themselves. As I was making fences by painting on individual pieces of wood reclaimed from skips and the streets and beaches of Eastbourne, they began to accumulate in piles around my studio and my house. As these piles took up too much floorspace when lying flat, I began to put them in groups leaning in corners of rooms or against walls. Before long they started to get to a tipping point where they assertd themselves as works of art in their own right. These were in some senses the opposite of fences because they were not defensive structures and they were re-arrangeable, making them very amenable to other people playing with them and creating their own grouping or artwork with them.

Shutters

The Shutter series is the latest manifestation of my work using paint and wood. They were inspired by a recent trip to Bermuda where I created a series of paintings in oil that included hurricane shutters within the paintings. I was drawn to them because they were similar to the idea of fences or barricades in as much as they shielded the view from the viewer. Another defensive structure which explored the idea of painting being a refuge where the truth or statement from the artist is hidden or sublimated.

Digital

I often use PhotoShop to make sketches or mock-ups of some of my paintings. Sometimes I use it purely to make digital works. This is a selection.

Ceramic

I have been making Ceramic of one sort or another for the last 30 years

These are my latest efforts

Recent

My work can travel down different avenues.

These are my most recent works