Mark Ward
|  Mark Ward's paintings are about landscape. He uses ideas based on experiences and preconceptions. They are inventive but also about intervention and presentation.
The plants and creatures can be pieces on a gameboard, half built construction kits, parts of museum displays or theatrical stage sets, or simply souvenirs placed on a shelf. 
Sometimes Mark develops ideas from sketches, but more frequently he builds models which are carefully lit and observed. He paints in oil and acrylic and often uses pastel and charcoal.
The paintings relate to Africa, where Mark has lived and still visits frequently, and to Suffolk, where he now lives.  Mark Ward taught art for many years and was also a product designer. His Suffolk studio is surrounded by lush tropical vegetation.
|
WORKS FOR SALE FROM THIS POPULAR AWARD WINNER
Mark Ward
Originally from the Midlands, Mark Ward studied at Manchester College of Art before working as a product designer. But it was a visit to a friend working as a volunteer on the Kenya/Uganda border that began a lifelong connection with Africa. Mark stayed for two years helping villagers design and build a school and teaching maths and science ‘I went back many years later and it’s hardly changed!’
Mark’s sketchbooks at the time were ‘full of graphic little worlds, heavily influenced by Paul Klee.’ He started painting the landscape around the school in watercolour, mostly mud huts and banana groves, and sold a painting to pay for his flight back to England; the first and only sale for the next 30 years. Back in England Mark taught art in south Essex for many years until various excursions into East Anglia, including concerts at Snape Maltings and birdwatching at Minsmere, eventually led to a move to Suffolk where five years ago he built a studio, surrounded it with tropical palms and banana plants, and took up painting full-time. For Mark the paintings are a way of thinking about a place, rather than how it might look through a lens – he never takes photographs. Instead Mark paints from still life stage sets, an idea that arose simply from trying to figure out where light and shadows should go, ‘it’s what Gainsborough did to make up landscapes behind his portraits. Playing with models and materials usually leads to further ideas that I probably wouldn’t arrive at just by using a sketchbook.’ The stage sets and models are also used to distil the essence of a place; ‘In a way they are souvenirs, reminders without too much detail. A stage designer may just use a few props, or add a few hints to give an idea of a place – it’s’ not necessary to paint hundreds of trees to represent a forest.’ ‘However, what we experience of a place is largely influenced by what we set out to see. Many people go to Kenya to see the ‘Big Five’ mammals. The lucky ones will see so much more! Conversely I was told a story by a ranger in a forest near Malindi. A group of bird watchers came across a herd of elephants, very rare in that forest. On returning to camp they reported all the birds they had seen and omitted to report the elephant herd. They’d seen what they’d set out to see – the rest was unimportant.’ This notion of preconception also relates to the toy-like imagery of Mark’s paintings through the theme of play and learning, ‘we might get our preconceptions of a place from the travel brochure, but we are also strongly influenced at an early age by the toys we play with or the pictures we see – this is the teacher talking!’ Indeed images of Africa where there in Mark’s own childhood before he’d ever visited Kenya, his nursery curtains were embroidered with African animals by his mother.