THE MARKS WE MAKE : a group exhibition

StateoftheART Gallery is proud to present ‘The Marks We Make’, a group exhibition in which we approach the term loosely to feature a range of media. 

Mark making is a term used to describe the different lines, patterns, and textures used to create a piece of art. It applies to any art material on any surface, not only paint on canvas or pencil on paper. A dot made with a pencil, a line created with a pen, a swirl painted with a brush - or paper cutting. These are all types of mark making.

"The marks I make are so instinctive that I find it hard to explain the process, however I do know that the seeming freedom of the final marks is made possible by the underlying structure - I do spend time on the drawing and dimensions in the early stages and especially so when painting over another image. I work with fragmented images and so the surface and marks often appear fragmented, applied and mostly left fresh with little blending and with foreground (subject matter) and background holding the same importance.

I don’t think a lot about what I am doing as I paint, after the early decisions of size and colour that is, I feel like I just paint what I see but I do look really hard! The marks I make contribute to my work that I think these days can best be described as a hybrid of representation and abstraction and that is influenced always by my design background." - Jeannie Kinsler

“There are artefacts and particulates on and in the paint because of my painting process. I am, for all intents and purposes, a reflexive painter, which is a short-hand way of saying that I paint in reaction to, and with reflection on, the work itself. In other words, I don’t paint with a finished product in mind, rather, I build up a significant amount of material in advance, start the painting and let the process guide my next set of choices and painting strategies. As such, I am a lot more focused on both the act of painting and the ‘happy accidents’ that emerge during the painting’s journey.

Particulates also act as a stamp of authenticity, as evidence of the process of painting. I am not simply creating the illusion of a window into a world, I am also making a painting, which is messy, complicated but fundamentally physical and visceral. That particulates find their way on the paint is part of that – it is like a scar that hints at a history.

It is also interesting to note that this is one of the ways that many paintings are forensically dated – there are very few paintings free of such matter (especially not those that were painted in the open air). We are just so focused on the ‘finished’ product that this evidence of process if often forgotten or ignored.” - Cedric Vanderlinden