Mark Preston | Silent Ovoid
Mark Preston
Silent Ovoid
Focus Gallery, January 8 - 30, 2021
Ovoid (Not to be confused with:
Avoid – elude, keep away or shun
something that is shaped like an egg with
a broader end at the base
Silent Ovoid
Although many of the art work are from previous shows, these pieces demonstrate a constant in theme. This theme carries into this current show of the new work that illustrate the ideas of connectedness in our quest of the spirit in the natural world and to remind ourselves of this through our daily lives.
Some cultural groups separate themselves from this world while others prefer to include this world in the everyday in so much as to remind themselves through everyday objects.
These everyday objects can be utilitarian or as a symbol to be adorned on walls or as jewelry to be seen.
Tlingit people have developed a style and culture that expresses their belief systems in such a unique way as to include the natural world and the spirit world. In this world the Tlingit people sought to reveal this spirit world to the natural world.
As an artist it has been my own nature to pictorialize the ideas that carry a strong message through imagined themes. Having spent the greater part of my life learning and developing firstly as a person then secondly as an artist, eventually neither world could be distinguished from the other.
Only in the past ten years have I been able to take the leap of faith from what is commonly known as traditional to the world of contemporary or the abstract. In the past I have always been silent about these ideas in so much as to say that my silence held me back from what was really going on in my world. Hence the title “Silent Void.”
I would surmise that I couldn’t be here had it not been for all those years of silence… developing an idea often comes from a complicated and sometimes volatile world. Life has to be experienced and understood before we can move forward. Moving forward for me was and is a matter of taking materials of this world to express common and diverse ideas, sometimes risking my own safeguards.
Many people live a comfortable existence in this world and never really experience what is it to do without those of basic needs, such as home, work, or food. We all seek this safe place and do find it, and yet there seems to be something that is missing from it all… what is it that drives us to look beyond the basic necessities of the natural world? This silent place that cannot be seen, touched or owned… somehow defies our logic senses, yet has need to be expressed in numerous ways.
This has been my driving force… that is to say something valid about the world I live in and that as an artist to create is as natural as eating, breathing and living life. What is your driving force? What is it that you believe in? Where is it that you find yourself in the end of life’s journey?
I believe in the future of us… the unknown place.
That place can be summoned from the imagined place.
A Silent Space in time, in matter and in creation.
(Tenna-Tsa-teh) master of all the copper in the land
MARK PRESTON
Mark Preston began studying silver carving under renowned Gitksan artist Phil Janzé while attending K’san in Hazelton, BC. He then began learning the techniques of wood carving with carver, Eugen Alfred. Mark is a multidisciplinary artist who works in a variety of mediums. His contemporary pieces are inspired by minimalism and abstraction.
Mark recontextualizes Northwest Coast formline shapes by making precise cutouts into panels, thus turning traditional shapes into negative space. His minimalist, all-white motif symbolizes clarity, peacefulness, and open-mindedness. In this same vein, many of Mark’s pieces are purposely left untitled to allow for open interpretation of their meanings.
Mark Preston cites European masters Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as early influences, though works by Picasso, Mark Rothko, and Northwest Coast artists like Bill Reid, Robert Davidson, Roy Vickers, and Ted Harrison, have served to influence his more recent works.
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