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Mark England Art |
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STATEMENT
During the past two years I have focused on making the transition from drawing to painting and pushing my work to new ways of expression. In my earlier drawings I focused on line and the wealth of information it could convey. Now, I am working through the challenges of color and value within the context of issues I have continued to explore for the past twenty years. The American landscape is cloaked in cultural opacities and cluttered with human debris. I contend that no one with a twentieth-century eye can see through the layers of artificial meaning and histories we have imposed onto this finally impenetrable continent. So, rather than trying for that ever-elusive glimpse of a landscape or history in its purity, I choose to draw the perceptions and impositions between us and a place we cannot know.
In my paintings of America I am far more concerned with representing and questioning cultural and visual expectations than with illustrating a scene. In a sense, my paintings and drawings are anthropological; in them, I often dwell on the values, activities, and events of ancient and contemporary cultures, “tracing” the traces they left behind. I am especially intrigued by the events through time that tie seemingly unrelated people and events together in broad cycles: Ancient sea voyages, a people migrating to a refuge in the desert, epic battles, a promised land inhabited by many self chosen peoples that either prosper or suffer because of their activities on the land.
All of my work, in some way or another, is about landscape and how we see ourselves through it and impose our values on it. My paintings are both referential and highly interpretive, depicting panoramic views of specific locations. They deal with our perceptions of time, social and environmental history, and tend to look like maps, but my “maps” are not accurate according to cartographic expectations. These are maps of time, culture, dreams, perceptions, the future, and how we wish to see ourselves and our history. They invite the viewer to become lost in them and then to make conscious and intuitive sense of the perceptual environment. I twist perspective, visually and historically. Because of the juxtaposing of unrelated buildings and events, each scene could be hundreds of years in the past, or in the process of being constructed, or in the future after everything has been torn down, destroyed, or worn away. All things, time, history, memory, and perceptions are present in these paintings.
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EDUCATION
August, 1988: M.F.A. in painting, Brigham Young University.
1986: B.F.A. in drawing, Brigham Young University
SIGNIFICANT SHOWS
Utah Arts Council Rio Grande Station 2006 Fellowship Show
Kayo Gallery, Salt Lake City, July, 2006
Finch Lane Public Gallery, Salt Lake City, May 2006
B.Y.U. Library, Provo, Utah, April, 2006
Third and Main, Salt Lake City, Utah, January, 2003.
Finch Lane Public Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah. January 7, 2000.
Cordell Taylor Gallery, Salt Lake City, 1999.
“Venus and Mars” exhibition of collages at U.V.S.C. 1996.
SELECTED JURIED SHOWS AND AWARDS
2006 Utah Arts Council Fellowship Award $10,000 Art Access Gallery Fundraiser Show Religious and Spiritual Art Show, Springville, Utah Utah Arts Council grant recipient show 2005 Utah Arts Council $2000 grant recipient Utah Arts Council Statewide 2005 Painting and Sculpture Travel Award 2004 Utah Arts Council Statewide Works on Paper $600 Juror and Travel prizes 2003 Utah Arts Council Grant Recipient Show Utah Arts Council Development $1200 Grant April Salon: Springville, Utah
Juxtapositions: The Artist and the Environment, Finch Lane,S.L.C. Utah Art 2002 Olympic Exhibition, Salt Lake City, Utah 150 Years of Utah Artists, Springville Museum Black and White Exhibition, Eccles Art Center, Honorable mention 2001 Louisiana State University 2001 Works on Paper 9th National Juried Show, Northern New Jersey Art Center Mesa Contemporary Arts National Drawing 2001, Mesa, Arizona. Cover Art for Invitation Utah 2001 Works on Paper, $600 Merit and Travel Awards April Salon: Springville, Utah, 2000 Utah Arts Council Fellowship finalist. July, 2000. Salt Lake Art Center. $550 award. “Utah 2000:” Statewide exhibit. April Salon: Springville, Utah, Merit Award Spiritual Art, Springville Black and White State Exhibit, Eccles Art Center, Ogden, Utah 1999 Spiritual Art, Springville Museum Statewide Competition, Eccles Art Center, Ogden, Utah Utah 98, Statewide exhibit, Jurors award April Salon, 2nd Place, Purchased by juror
Spiritual Art Springville, Utah 1997 April Salon, Springville, Utah Spiritual Art, Springville, Cash Award Black and White State Exhibit, Ogden Utah 1996 Utah 96 April Salon, Springville, Utah Spiritual Art, Springville, Utah 1995 Utah `95 April Salon, Springville, Utah |
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