Profile - Mark P Cullen
Born: Dublin, Ireland, 1960.
In his current work Mark applies oil paint to canvas with various palette knives and brushes to form common and everyday objects, or familiar sea and landscapes. Lines and shapes are marked out with charcoal. Paint is layered on, then partly scraped back with palette knives, scratched out with screwdrivers, ends of brushes, or pencils, and then heavy loads of paint are re-layered around what appear to be nervous and irregular lines but in truth are defining lines made with an absolute sureness by the artist. Mark plays with depth, scale, and perspective so that we are never certain about the plane of the subject. His interest lies in the simplicity of form and line rather than the detail, but always giving the sense of place or object. These tactile images merge with the foreground breaking the consistency of the horizontals leaving the viewer with uneasy but simple and familiar images.
Press:
Peter FitzGerald (Editor of CIRCA Art Magazine) said of Mark’s work,
“One of the exciting things about Mark’s paintings is that you can read the process of enquiry in the works themselves. From one work to the next, you can see how Mark has taken different angles on the same subject matter, or tried out the same painterly language on different subject matters, always with a sense of getting a better handle on ways of expressing what fascinated him in the first place. You can also read the mark-making within each work. When an artist leaves marks for you to read, such that you yourself can feel the paint being applied, the artist is letting you know that you are to come along on the journey of enquiry. This always makes for generous inclusive painting.”
In his current work Mark applies oil paint to canvas with various palette knives and brushes to form common and everyday objects, or familiar sea and landscapes. Lines and shapes are marked out with charcoal. Paint is layered on, then partly scraped back with palette knives, scratched out with screwdrivers, ends of brushes, or pencils, and then heavy loads of paint are re-layered around what appear to be nervous and irregular lines but in truth are defining lines made with an absolute sureness by the artist. Mark plays with depth, scale, and perspective so that we are never certain about the plane of the subject. His interest lies in the simplicity of form and line rather than the detail, but always giving the sense of place or object. These tactile images merge with the foreground breaking the consistency of the horizontals leaving the viewer with uneasy but simple and familiar images.
Press:
Peter FitzGerald (Editor of CIRCA Art Magazine) said of Mark’s work,
“One of the exciting things about Mark’s paintings is that you can read the process of enquiry in the works themselves. From one work to the next, you can see how Mark has taken different angles on the same subject matter, or tried out the same painterly language on different subject matters, always with a sense of getting a better handle on ways of expressing what fascinated him in the first place. You can also read the mark-making within each work. When an artist leaves marks for you to read, such that you yourself can feel the paint being applied, the artist is letting you know that you are to come along on the journey of enquiry. This always makes for generous inclusive painting.”
