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Mark H
Mark H, Princess in the Garden 2008. Since an early age Mark H has felt drawn to the outdoors; to the calm of the ocean where he spent much of his childhood and to the pastel tones of regional Australia.
Having first picked up a paintbrush four years ago, he has in that time developed a body of work that is stylistically distinctive and receiving increasing critical attention. Hood mostly paints with unmixed, pastel tone acrylics, which give his work a sense of purity and calm. This sense of calm is in opposition to the confronting gaze of his subjects, which haunts and unnerve the viewer.
Working out of the Roomies Artspace studio in Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west since its creation in 2005, Mark paints up to five days a week and is quick to admit that the studio and its staff have been integral to his development as an artist.
While Mark says that he originally took up painting as something that he found calming and pleasing to do, it is now significantly more important. Mark is constantly refining his technique and has reached a defining point in his technical development, aiming to progress beyond the two dimensional compositions that define his work to date and begin to render his characters three dimensionally and with an increased level of detail. In order to achieve an increased emphasis on realism, he believes that the next step will be to develop his control over the tone and texture of the work. He feels that it is necessary to make his practice more difficult in order for him to remain challenged in the studio.
Mark’s work is held within the Parliament House permanent collection as well as numerous private collections and was selected for the Marrickville Contemporary Art Prize. In June 2009 his first solo exhibition was held at the Addison Road Gallery in Marrickville.
When asked about his professional aims, Mark states that he would like to continue to sell his work directly to new audiences. He desires this not for financial reasons, but because he sees this as a measure of his development as an artist and an indicator that his works has reached a level of quality able to inspire people to want to own them.
Mark H, Two Boys and a Girl at the Beach 2009.