BIOGRAPHY

Mark Barnett is an artist who was born in, Cambridge, England, in 1995. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh, College of Art, with a Bachelors in Fine Art Painting. Sometime hereafter, he completed a Masters in Philosophy at the University of Essex. Now he is currently a practising artist residing in, Edinburgh, Scotland.

ARTIST STATEMENT 

I consider myself to be a contemporary mixed-media painter. My work is an intuitive process that embraces pure materiality and focuses upon the expressionistic gestural impetus of mediums.

Individuals who view abstract expressionistic art often struggle to understand what it means; however, I believe this art is perhaps better comprehended as kind of visual ‘language’, or more adequately as a sensuous perceptual experience. I also see abstract expressionistic art as playing a role in disclosing our complex capacity to be receptive to sensualities. Moreover, drawing from modern and contemporary art history, I aim to explore abstract expressive form, mark-making, and composition in my work. And I strive to encapsulate raw emotion unobstructed by conventional landscape or figurative representation. 

My work is equally influenced by a substantial theoretical interest in a diverse array of philosophical topics and poetical themes. On the one hand, in philosophy, more specifically, these topics include: ontology, ethics, aesthetics, existentialism, phenomenology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, post-structuralism, and environmentalism. On the other hand, in terms of the latter: I seek to instil in my work a poetical dimension that incites sincere feeling and visceral corporeality. These diverse co-costituitive constituents thus circulate dynamically throughout the veins of all my artworks.

Furthermore, I hold that one of art’s purposes, in general, is to articulate the uniquely discrete and lived experiences of the individual. In many cases, artists are emphatically dedicated to the systematic and rigorous interrogation of their own experiential sensualities. They may achieve this self-expression in virtue of whatever mediums, and or disciplines, they feel is necessary to do so. The exactitude of the creative process usually entails cultivating an indeterminacy that obscures how an artistic work will eventuate. I think of my own work as eliciting a complex series of reactions, thoughts, and emotions, with no necessarily unified and singular narrative, whilst imbued with immanent beauty and life. As such, to me at least, in this manner — there is no clearly defined boundary that separates art from life.

REPRESENTATIVES

Amber Arts Ltd, Edinburgh, Scotland from 2018 to 2020.

QUALIFICATIONS

BTEC (level 3) Extended Dipolma Art and Design at Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, England, 2014.

BA (with Honours) Fine Art Painting at University of Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2018.

MA Philosophy at University of Essex, Colchester, England, 2022.

AWARDS

Shortlisted for the Art Solo Award 2018.

EXHBITS 

‘Art and Design Degree Show’ at Edinburgh College of Art in, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2018.

‘Rift’ at White Space Gallery in, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2018.

‘After the Storm’ at The Royal Botanic Gardens in, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2017.

‘Earth, Landscape, and Ecology’ at Art Scape Gibraltar Point in, Toronto, Canada, 2016.

ARTIST RESIDENCIES 

Three months artist residency at Sachaqa Centro De Arte in, Tarapoto, Peru, 2018.

Three months artist residency at Saruya in, Fujiyoshida, Japan, 2017.

Three months artist residency at Art Scape Gibraltar Point in, Toronto, Canada, 2016.