Mark Masters is a British artist who divides his time between a day job in the Midlands and vigorous pursuits as a contemporary visual artist. By day, he works in a school, assisting Special Educational Needs children with art, design technology, textiles, and drama projects. In the remaining hours, he dedicates himself to creating and exhibiting his own art.
Mark Masters’ practice has earned notable recognition and representation across multiple prestigious platforms. He recently enjoyed a successful show at 44AD Artspace gallery in Bath, a venue where he maintains membership and participates in a biennial cycle. His work is represented by the Gagliardi Gallery on the King’s Road in Chelsea, London. He also sells through an online gallery, Artgallery.co.uk, and undertakes private, direct-to-customer sales. In 2023, his work was included in and sold at the London Biennial, held every two years at the Old Town Hall in Chelsea. Beyond traditional exhibitions, he self-publishes artist books and has had his portfolio published by the International Confederation of Art Critics in a volume entitled “Let’s Unfinish What We’re Seeing.” This 87-page A4 hardback book is available for purchase on Amazon UK, highlighting the global reach of his practice.
“Mark Masters’ practice is a journey into the psyche, where emotion becomes form and form becomes a language that invites viewers to read their own feelings into the canvas”, Timothy Warrington from The International Confederation of Art Critics said. This line, drawn from a contemporary observer, captures the essence of his approach to painting and the way viewers engage with his work.
His artistic philosophy centers on painting that which cannot be painted in a conventional sense. He seeks to render feelings and emotions—images born of dreams and the subconscious—exploring themes such as pain, anxiety, love, hate, desire, and frustration. He holds a strong belief that religion lies at the heart of many contemporary troubles and advocates for women to assume leadership in addressing our socio-political challenges. While some observers categorize his work within a broader “Dark Art” trend in England, he does not consciously align himself with any single genre or label.
In addition to painting, he pursues music and poetry, enriching his artistic world with multiple expressive outlets. For him, the ultimate reward is the recognition and acquisition of his artworks by collectors who wish to display them in their homes—an affirmation he cherishes deeply as the greatest gift an artist can receive.
Dark, foreboding caverns constitute the environment in which lie Mark Masters’ idiosyncratic and eccentric creations. His style predominantly draws upon the Expressionist and Cubist movements, although a nuanced inclination towards Neoclassicism is detectable in the heavily atmospheric nature of the works that demonstrate connections with the intense and dramatic skies portrayed by Jacques Louis David and Nicolas Poussin. His thoroughly unique artistic technique, in which he rejects conventional tools and, alternatively, boldly manipulates the oil paint with his fingers and rags, elevates his work due to a pure and primordial control over his medium. This physically direct connection that the artist has with his materials asserts his comprehensive internal thoughts and instantly shares them with the viewer as his spiritual energy is transmitted alacritously from his fingertips to the canvas.
Masters’ indomitable imagination and eloquent expression of his ideals are ubiquitous throughout his paintings and hold further reference to Surrealism with cerebral links to Paul Eluard. His unmitigated talent relentlessly communicates his intellectual perspective through an exquisite and subdued use of chiaroscuro and inherent connection with the world. These elements combine with a myriad of artistic inspirations that culminate in profoundly thought-provoking opuses that are both cognitively and visually engaging.
Considering Masters’ distinctive and individual approach to his compositions, inspiration from Constructivism is abundantly perceptible. Upon close analysis, an influence from artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Josef Albers and Lyonel Feininger can be detected through their shared use of line and space. Masters often depicts figures trapped inside tightly enclosed surroundings with overbearing backdrops that draw impenetrable comparisons with Francis Bacon, particularly when observing the intensity and depth of colour utilised by these artists to convey the distortion of form. This is exemplified in ‘There Is No Breeze In This House’, which confronts the viewer with a lugubrious juxtaposition between the central figure’s frustrated motions expressing a will to escape motion of the central figure and the oppressively cramped environment that evokes the acute sense of confinement.
There is an undeniably sculptural element to Masters’ paintings that conjures images of the Geometry of Fear sculptors who became prevalent in the aftermath of the Second World War. His mechanical forms resembling coleoptera summon thoughts of Lynn Chadwick; the juxtaposition of delicate wings and harsh, almost metallic, forms and surfaces that often possess carapaces, wings and beaks seem vulnerable albeit simultaneously aggressive. This eerie combination suggests further inspiration from the three-dimensional work of Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel and Wifredo Lam, particularly when observing the hauntingly anomalous structures and figures that they present.
Each element of Masters’ powerful artworks convey the inner mullings of the artist’s complex and intellectual mind; every aspect contains, at its essence, the details of a mystifying tale which holds allegorical importance to the artist’s subjective viewpoint. Perspicacious values exude from his paintings and suggest intuitive comparisons with Dadaists Hannah Höch and Hans Richter, while his philosophical ideals regarding religion and war seem akin to the Dada movement as a whole. This artistic attitude towards socio-political matters proffers a foreboding message with a compelling moral in reference to the irrevocable nature of humankind.
This is increasingly apparent when considering ‘And It All Began With This’ and ‘And It All Began With You’, which solemnly depict a reverent interpretation of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, which build comparisons both with Graham Sutherland as well as the Baroque and Renaissance styles of art. Masters’ academic decision to reference a universally recognisable iconic image such as this further entrenches his warning to humanity to take heed and avoid repetition of the past.
Masters delves into a limitless pool of artistic inspirations and impeccably developed skills that catalyse his creative proclivities. The academic culmination of sources manifest in his evocative artworks as a dynamic and stimulating incarnation of his resounding internal truths; every attribute of these indelibly communicative works reveals the soul of the artist and fervently conveys his intrinsic message to the enthralled viewer.
Photo credits: The photographs belong to the artist’s archive.
Sources: Review by Timothy Warrington.
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