Mark Mulholland, Featured Artist for October, 2020

Born in Glasgow 1971, Mark graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1993 with a BA Honours in Sculpture and was awarded the RSA John Kinross Scholarship to Florence, Italy.
During a six year stay in the Tuscan capital he worked on several private commissions. He spent three years working with the renowned ‘Il Cesello’, Cipriani family bronze workshop and foundry in Sesto Fiorentino, honing his sculptural modelling skills and technical casting expertise.
On returning to Scotland, Mark continued his artistic practise whilst gaining a Post Graduate Certificate of Education from Glasgow University and went on to teach secondary school art for the next 17 years. Since 2005 he has returned to his first love of drawing & painting, using varied techniques in the mediums of oil, watercolours and acrylics.
Mark’s portraiture has gained him national and international recognition; his portrait of artist John Byrne was exhibited at the BP Portrait Award in 2014, which showed in the National Portrait Galleries in London and Edinburgh as well as traveling to galleries in Sunderland and Aberystwyth.
In 2017 he was an exhibitor at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries, London. His painting of chef and TV personality Tony Singh was shown at the inaugural Scottish Portrait Awards in Edinburgh 2017. He followed this up with a further shortlisted portrait in 2018, which showed in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

In 2020 Mark featured on Sky Art’s Portrait artist of the Year, painting Pussy Cat Doll Ashley Roberts, who went on to take her portrait home.

Artist’s Statement:

I consider myself a multi-discipline artist and wish not to be defined as someone who works in any one genre. I love the process of creation which leads me to produce figurative, landscape and still life artworks and have always enjoyed making things in two and three dimensions.

My figurative compositions often include visual symbolism and narrative. I look to promote environmental awareness in these works and have introduced ‘flowerhead’ and ‘treehead’ hybrid characters in the paintings. In fact, the tree is becoming an omnipresent feature in my work.

I am currently involved in landscape paintings of the Campsie Fells which made a lasting impression since my childhood. My work at the moment explores the vibrancy of colour along with the simplification of shapes whilst developing and experimenting with the application of the media I use.

I am currently accepting commissions for landscapes and portraits.

Mark's Glasgow Art Club's Artists Directory Entry

markmulhollandartist.co.uk

markmulhollandartist@gmail.com

Facebook: @mbmartist

Instagram: @mbmartist