Karst

Mark Williams

Mark Williams earned his BFA from Miami University in 1997 and his MFA from the University of Connecticut in 2004. Other study took place at the Lacoste School of the Arts in France, the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design.  Mark has worked at galleries including the Leo Castelli Gallery and for artists Sean Scully, Donald Sultan, and Sol LeWitt.  He has given several public talks about his work and has taught over fifty art classes at various colleges and universities in Connecticut before relocating to Lexington, KY in the summer of 2018.  His work has been written about in many publications and has been included in over 100 exhibitions at venues including the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Real Art Ways in Hartford, Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, Miller Gallery in Cincinnati, the International Print Center of New York, Project 4 in Washington DC, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, CA.  Mark’s work is in several public and private collections including The LeWitt Collection, The Wadsworth Atheneum, Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

 My current work is based on cave interiors, especially the formations of flowstones, stalactites, and stalagmites.  The earliest known drawings over 30,000 years old are found in caves.  Humans have been drawn to these chambers for a very long time, and I am no exception.  During the past eighteen years, I have visited nearly 100 caves and photographed the settings.  The artwork is inspired by these images.  Nostalgia is often referenced in the use of decades old fabrics for the base of paintings.  This reference to the past is then partially hidden by layers of screen printed and hand painted images.  The layering suggests the passage of time and accumulated memories.  Repeated imagery becomes a rhythmic pattern that suggests that one is looking at something that is part of a larger, unseen whole.  My artwork alludes to the fact that we are all part of a larger realm measured in geologic time.