Mark Making

Several things continue to fascinate me year after year in my art making, faces, tearing paper, mark making. The term “markmakimg” is the latest art lingo for any kind of marks, pencil scribbles, ruled lines, expressive brushstrokes. We make marks every day and we often discount them as unworthy of our attention. Scribbly hand written grocery lists, telephone (or zoom) doodles, accidental or stray marks or scratches, a quick drawing showing the dimensions of a garden. These marks are special because they are all marks made by you that show what you’re thinking, what you’re doing, what you’re holding. Your mark is unique to you. If I told a group of 10 people to make a quick scribble without thinking, all of the scribbles would be different. Some would be sharp and angular, some curvy, some delicate, some bold, some random some deliberate. All would represent a piece of you.

When I make scribbly brushstrokes or pencil marks in a painting, that’s me on a canvas. My mark is like my handwriting, unique to me. I love to stand in front of a Van Gogh painting (on those rare occasions I can actually stand in front of an original Van Gogh) and see his brushstrokes and I can imagine that he stood exactly where I am standing (relative to the painting), and how he held his brush, what he might have been thinking or looking at when he made this brushstroke, how he made repeated short strokes and didn’t try to blend the paint and erase his mark. It’s thrilling. I can feel Vincent. When you look at my random seeming marks, you are feeling me.

Checkout my paintings chock full of marks and scribbles here!