Profile

Mark is a highly skilled artist who is gifted with an eye for detail. His ability to capture a certain finesse together with the overall feel of any subject is what marks him out. Mark’s work demonstrates his appreciation of both naturally occurring beauty and man’s use of natural materials.

Mark trained in design, illustration and photography, then worked as a professional graphic artist for 8 years which taught him to appreciate visual clarity of communication in balance with proportion, elements and composition.

Mark works mainly in pencil and colour pencil as these related media came naturally to him from an early age and are ideally suited to his very methodical and refined technique.

Not wishing to be limited to a particular subject or style, Mark is constantly seeking new challenges. His artistic career began with a series of highly accomplished railway studies. His black and white atmospheric images of steam engines are extremely popular.

Since taking up horse riding nearly a decade ago Mark has refined a skill for animal portraiture. Subsequently he developed his interest in portraiture to encompass human subjects. Whilst still undertaking regular animal portrait commissions, Mark also creates images specifically for reproduction. His portrait style is now in two distinct styles, these being very developed and unique but obviously from the same artist’s technical process.

My ideas and inspiration

My work is highly detailed and whilst showing progression has remained true to the style I developed at an early age. You may find my work quite different to the more loose contemporary styles commonly seen as it is worked in detail yet left partly disconnected.

I admire technical skill, but as a trained photographer I recognise that creating photorealistic work can seem pointless. My inspirations include the Dutch Masters, the Arts and Crafts Movement and the Pre-Raphaelites. As a designer I especially love the Art Nouveau movement for a more modern holistic approach towards design. Its connections to the natural form has effected everyone's environment today.

All my work whether completely filling the page, or using incomplete areas coupled with disappearing but constructive lines and shading has reached its balance.

We know that a loved soul, treasured object or place of meaning just is and a picture can imply this presence without us seeing its visual full stop. I want to convey this presence inventively, leaving its conclusion to the viewer, without saying too much.

I naturally feel within me to pick out all the complexity of the subject, the simple essence expressed by shape and colour has rarely moved me. My connection with the world does not leave me in ore the same way when made too abstract in art.

So I leave it to you to consider, complete and interpret my depiction of the man made or naturally occurring world. I leave it to you to take this image to your own conclusion.