About the Artist
Mark King
Mark King, a champion of Impressionism and the Ecole de Paris, was born in Bombay in 1931 of British parents. He is the product of an exotic and privileged upbringing in India, where he lived until the age of sixteen during the tumultuous last days of the British Raj. In 1948, following graduation from La Martiniere College in Calcutta, where his focus had been botany as well as art, King sailed to England to attend Bournemouth College of Art, having determined to pursue painting, sculpture, architecture and theatre design. He subsequently spent seven years as Resident scenic designer at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre, but in 1961 decided to concentrate on painting and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole and the Louvre.
Change has been an important catalyst in Mark King's life as well as his art. When he lived in Paris and Italy during the 1960's, he was a plein air painter, working out-of-doors in order to study and describe the effects of light and atmosphere like the Barbizon School and Impressionists before him. His move to the United States in 1968 prompted a shift in his working methods. Now he labors exclusively in the studio. For subjects he knows intimately, like Paris street scenes, King draws from memory. For sporting subjects, on the other hand, the camera is an indispensable tool. He takes several photographs of a subject, condensing various views or themes into one composition, without exactly reproducing nature. Small pencil sketches noting color and compositional motifs act as reminders of feelings and responses to events and vistas King admires. From these two sources, King produces vibrant preliminary drawings in gouache, devising structural and visual solutions for larger canvases, which he executes in acrylic. King consciously handles gouaches like watercolor, blocking out the backgrounds of his drawings with thin washes, preferring thicker impasto for surface treatment. Several canvases are in process at once. King masterfully manipulates a palette knife ninety percent of the time, only using a brush for small details. He moves freely from one subject and medium to another, gaining energy as he tackles the physical and mental demands of each composition.
