Artist Statement
Mark David Gray
420 S 1st St
Studio B
Milw WI 53206
414-331-1530
http//www.markdavidgray.com
My work is inclined toward representational imagery, but my education at Layton School of Art under professor’s, Guido Brink and Durwood Dommisse, I learned to paint based on the principles of abstraction and expressionism. This carried on with a mix of other influences from the Austrian Symbolist painter, Gustav Klimdt, plus Egon Schiele, both displaying a type of emblematic poster like quality with a strong emphasis on rectilinear composition.
After Layton I held a variety of jobs in advertising, amassing the experiences that informed my artistic style. I was exposed to the Pop Art philosophy and began to incorporate elements of this style, borrowing images directly from the print media and other elements of popular culture. Pop Art challenges tradition by awarding the same significance to the everyday mass-produced object as the unique fine art piece, closing the gap between “high art” and “low art”. My Pop Art influences stem from Roy Lichtenstein’s graphic comic book style, to the use of type and fragmented pop imagery of Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.
Themes dealing with individuality, community, propaganda, consumerism and spirituality prevail in my work. The painting, Economy +Nothing, I question the real motivations of our economy by combining the recognizable images of the Wall Street bull, a symbol of power, money and greed, against the background of flying war machines and the ubiquitous, patriotic stars and stripes. With this combination of popular imagery, I utilized bold, saturated color to unsettle the viewer while subverting the images “media-tized” context.
My previous exploration involved the Kennedy Assassination of 1963, my childhood equivalent of the recent 9-11 events. Our culture witnessed tragedy and horror via mass media in real-time. Both situations threw the culture together, challenging for a moment the ability of our sacred cows of status and power to protect us and, our way of life. As in 9-11, we, as the presumed invincible nation, experienced a type of psychic vulnerability and were forced in an instant to confront the realities of life, death and our place as part of the world community.
The act of oil painting is a visceral experience for me. I like the feel of the brush and oil moving across the canvas. This creates conflict because advertising art is high gloss and machine –like, as compared to the physicality of my painting style. Lately, I am exploring ways to synchronize the two approaches through glazes. This method involves multiple layers of glazes, while in between each layer I break the glaze down with medium to create a distressed appearance and a richer, more complex surface. The randomness presented by glazing, compliments the imagery and generates a push-pull between the images, the liquidity of the paint, the medium, and the canvas surface. In addition, I want to mimic the worn look of old poster propaganda to further enhance the familiar historical references and contrast them against the background of contemporary mass-media-tized images. With this action I want to emote a type of collective experience shared in history with notions of nationalism, pride, neurotic fear and consumption. This embedded joint imagery presents an overview of time at one glance, as in advertising, while engaging the viewer in his/her own memories of history presented through mass media. Ultimately, I want my work to prod the viewer to form their own set of memes, outside the box of popular mass media and nationalist propaganda, while sharing honestly in our collective humanity.