MARK THOMPSON Welcome to the website of the artist Mark Thompson. The site is managed by the artist and all images are subject to copyright. If you have any questions and wish to contact me, please do so through the contact page.
 
Last update: February 3, 2012 New content: new news - video link
Mark Thompson is an artist - Welcome to the website of Mark Thompson. Mark Thompson is a painter - The paintings of Mark Thompson are generally derived from memories of  Scandinavia. Mark Thompson’s paintings are oil on canvas and are concerned with snow, ice, water - Norway is one of Mark Thompson’s favorite countries.  
 
STATEMENT: In the hope of glimpsing a certain image of a place, a landscape that is internal to me but never wholly within my grasp, I have travelled extensively and alone. In recent years, Iceland, mainland Scandinavia and Alaska being the most prescient. The paintings are, in a sense, an excavation of these experiences. The work however is made at a distance from this, filtered by memory. As such the paintings are in part a reconstruction of what I have observed, in part a discovery of the ideal I am searching for. Landscape however is progressively becoming a vehicle, a place in which to describe my footsteps, my history and fleeting presence. The paintings are often concerned with the border between two states or places - the edge of a village where civilization fades away, the edges of my purpose to walk and find. Time has become increasingly important in the work, each painting describing particular pockets of time in particular places - the moment before the streetlight flicker to life, the turning point as I reach the edge of a river and can proceed no further. These moment have taken on an increasing significance to my studio practice as the times flood back into focus. The process of remembering the damp earth smells, the feel of the air before it snows, the psychological turning point of my desire to head back from an uncertain road or open doorway, have become fixed in memory. These memories stand as a kind of testament to my own personal narrative - the history of my footsteps up to that point. It is my intention through the work to communicate a little of that history. Mark Thompson - 2009