BIOGRAPHY

Mark Barnett was born in Cambridge, United Kingdom, 1995. He graduated from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art, in 2018 with BA (Honours) in Fine Art Painting. He is now a Graphic Designer and practicing artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Creating art is an innate part of my life. I am an interdisciplinary mix-media artist and much of my work is an intuitive process, which is focused on the spontaneous expressive gestural impetus of media and paint; which uses my entire body. My work is driven by theoretical interests in a diverse set of multicultural sources, these are: Ecocentric Deep Ecology, Secular Modernist Neo-Buddhism, and Phenomenology. Each brush stroke aims at manifesting the contemplative respiration of ‘Now’ into physical and artistic action. Thus arriving in an intuitive revelation of the specific, simultaneous existence of the pure subjectivity of ‘Being’ and the world.

“The role of the artist is to become part of nature […] In the instant, there is a coincidence of events – wind blowing, grass growing, brush strokes appearing. All there is, is in the instant […] painting in the instant can be compared to the meditative state in which the mind is open to its vastness. It is the experience of [B]eing […] painting in the instant is the direct manifestation of the unknown through the painter as the instrument. The painter disappears in the instant, and reappears in the painting.” Gordon-Onslow Ford

QUALIFICATIONS

Art and Design (BETC), Long Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge.

BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art.

RESIDENCIES

Earth, Landscape, and Ecology – 2016 at Artscape Gibraltar Point, Toronto, Canda.

1 Month Painting/Drawing Residency – 2017 at Sachaqa Centro De Arte, San Roque De Cumbaza, Peru.

1 Month Art Residency – 2018 at DÔ-SÔ at Fujiyoshida, Yamanashi, Japan.

AWARDS

Shortlisted for the Art Solo Award – 2018

REPRESENTATIVES

Amber Arts Ltd