Mark Spencer
Initially, Mark Spencer's dream-like paintings might seem to be examples of pure fantasy, seductive in their rich suggestiveness. A closer look, however, reveals that there is more in these works than first meets the psyche. Compelling as they are -- once seen, who can easily forget Bride of Fear? -- these visions would not be convincing without the solid mastery of painting technique that animates them. Spencer's genius is the ability to balance the means with ends in order to create a visual experience that is as stimulating to the concious and unconscious mind as it is to the eye.
Mark Spencer is acutely aware of history of art, and it is fascinating to notice how he reanimates the past in a way that gives extraordinary urgency to his visions. Although the artist has allowed his work to be called "neo-classical surrealism", he has fortunately for us, avoided the pathetic and vitiated notion of Surrealism bequeathed to us by Salvatore Dali. Instead, Spencer has hone back to the late nineteenth-century symbolic roots of Surrealism to build his own robust and evocative worlds.
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Redondo, 72" h x 102" w
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Would House of Silence, for example, resonate so strongly without the existence of Arnold Bocklin's Island of the Dead? Would Sphinx and Nature Rules be such fascinating enigmas without the spirits of Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon hovering over them? To admit this is possible is to take nothing from Spencer's achievement. Absorbing what he needs from the past, he has tapped into our shared millennial unease to create a singularly hypnotic mirror in which we see reflected not only his dreams and distractions, but ours as well.
By: Richard V. West, Director, Frye Art Museum |
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