MARK THOMPSON

Mark Thompson

Born in the dead flat plain of the Fens in East Anglia in 1972, Mark began as an abstract painter but eventually found that his true preoccupation as a painter was landscapes.

He has travelled extensively and alone to Scandinavia, Finland and Alaska, his purpose as he says ‘to go out into the landscape - being a sponge, soaking it up'. Mark's majestic, snow-clad wildernesses evoke the remoteness and grandeur of the scenes portrayed. 

On returning to his studio, he starts to paint, but his object is not to depict a place rather, as he puts it ‘to find a place'. While travelling he draws, takes photographs and written notes of what he sees. Painting begins in an abstract way, ‘there is' he says ‘a lot of throwing the paint around, and a lot of pouring'.Through that physical moving of the pigment, he tries to find the place he is looking for. ‘There's always a picture inside your head, an internal landscape that you are trying to find, an equivalent to in the external world.'