"Mark making for an artist is like a musician playing jazz. It is spontaneous chaos controlled by the artist merely living in the moment."
Karrie Kaiyala Amiton
CAROLE KUNSTADT
"These purposeful marks are transformed into a new visual language when edited and juxtaposed with color fields of gouache. The graphite linear repetition suggests a continued process leading us to another level of understanding and perception. Repetitive lines of stitching sewn into the handmade paper reinforce the merger of these elements and reminds us of the persistence of time.
As this series progressed, mark-making emerged as the primary focus. Playful and layered, the graphite marks dance across the surface – fluid energetic responses to the moment. The horizontal linear repetition is grounding to the bursts of movement."
Carole Kunstadt
HILARY SHEEHAN
"I was drawn to the “Living Mark” call because mark making has always been central to my work. My paintings contain a variety of media, with each medium providing a different set of marks. My playful compositions are built using multiple layers of drawing and paint, incorporating collage and finished with cold wax. Recently I have begun to incorporate econometric note collage elements, souvenirs from my earlier life as an economist. These fragments of symbols and words add extra marks and energy to the work. I have always enjoyed finding accidentally vaguely figurative shapes in my collages, and in my “Recess” series, I started doing it on purpose. Each of these figures appears awkward and anatomically imprecise and appear to be dancing or goofing off in some way. My painting “So Dance” embodies the spirit of “Recess” but also encompasses an array of marks from a variety of sources from poured acrylic to drawing to economics notes to maps."
Hilary Sheehan
KATE ZIMMER
"Louise Bourgeois said “Art is a way of recognizing oneself”. I find this to be accurate in my search for identity and emotional outlet via painting. My painting “Untethered” represents things changing and me trying not to grasp on to what is no longer. Obscured bright colors hint at what’s in the process of evolution, and the chaotic pencil marks express the raw emotion with change and loss."
Kate Zimmer
MARIANNE HALL
"Embracing the expressive potential of the marks I create, I have come to view them as an art form in their own right. Utilizing materials such as ink, thread, twine, and wire, my marks transcend traditional boundaries. The title of this show, “Living Mark,” evokes a memory from that transformative workshop. In my piece, “Loose Footing, the marks extend beyond the flat surface, evolving into a dynamic 3D form with wire, further exploring the vitality and movement inherent in these marks."
Marianne Hall
ELAINE DUNHAM
"In college, I majored in English, but I love pictures even more than words."
Elaine Dunham
ROBIN KERR
"We make marks to share our thoughts, our hopes, our memories. Mark marking is our visual voice."
Robin Kerr
SUDIE RAKUSIN
"In my work the line has always been important. Being classically trained in figurative art, I only started exploring abstract painting in cold wax and oil in 2016. It’s fascinating and keeps me curious. The elegance of the line prevails. When I began this series a friend suggested they reminded her of fractals. Fractals, in nature, are never ending patterns, repeating themselves over and over. I feel like the ‘marks/fractals’ in this painting are like hieroglyphics from an ancient culture. I used my love of line, pattern and color to create these paintings."
Sudie Rakusin
Quote shared by Sudie, ‘One must always search for the desire of the line, where it wishes to enter or where to die.’ -Henri Matisse
SARA SWINK
"I’m enthralled by painting animal figures on my clay surfaces in a new way. Outcomes are varied and unpredictable because I’m using materials differently and then subjecting them to kiln firing. My personal creative edge feels like the definition of living mark."
Sara Swink
NANCY WILLIS
"The Living Mark suggests the life force that flows through the makers hand. For the piece, Respite I wanted to build up layers of oil paint to convey the texture of the verdant green foliage I saw from my room at a residency in France. Bathing in the variety of greens, dappled light and sway of the breeze, it became a respite from the burnt California landscape of my neighborhood that I left behind."
Nancy Willis
PATRICIA GIRAUD
A note from the studio, written in 2020: realization
"I have recognized that I love the grit, the messiness of working on copper and in using a press. I have embraced leaving the scratches and other aberrations of process on my plates as a reminder that my images are not drawings on paper. They are worked into copper and transferred to paper in a laborious, glorious, unpredictable way. I used to chase the pristine and the perfect - but now I feel like I have exhaled."
Patricia Giraud
DAVID MILLER
"Initiated by the artist yet shared with infinite variables outside the creator.
Let slip the preconceived idea and allow the mark to wander. A collaboration with the uncreated. Tethered to a fragment of the known."
David Miller
LORRAINE GLESSNER
"The “Living Mark” has been at the core of my personal work and teaching for over 23 years. All living things leave a physical mark, an imprint through the natural cycle and I trace connections through the study of marks on the earth and body that speak to this cycle.
My mark-making inspiration comes from the lines, contours and marks I see in nature. I’m drawn to the meandering patterns of roots, veins, water systems and various other underlying channels integral to life.
I photograph them, sit on the ground and trace them with my finger, then draw them repeatedly in my sketchbook. The repetitive mark-making process is like memorizing poetry and the marks become my language.
The mark establishes connections between me, nature, my work and the viewer. Lance Esplund said it best…Line is a rich metaphor for the artist. It denotes not only boundary, edge or contour, but is an agent for location, energy, and growth. It is literally movement and change – life itself."
Lorraine Glessner
NINA WEISS
"My practice as a professional artist over the past 45 years has led me through intense dives into several different mediums.
After a dry spell in Graduate school; I began drawing with chalk pastel on paper....a phase that lasted almost twenty years!
The drawings used layers and layers of colored lines, building up into densely layered imagery. This twenty year practice of drawing bought me eventually back into my first love...oil painting.
The paintings, like the drawings, continue to be linear; hatched, layered, and dense. The surface and gesture of the painting is very important to me. The Prairie landscapes allow me to continue to explore this mark making in my painting. I enjoy the challenge of depicting organic nature with gesture and line. I try to effectively communicate the essence of the Prairie landscape's dense tangles and layers with brevity and grace."
Nina Weiss
NANCY WATTERSON SCHARF
"Everyone leaves their mark on the world as I leave mine. My marks are musical notes that represent and transform my experiences, thoughts and feelings. For me, making marks is my spiritual practice."
Nancy Watterson Scharf
KIM MARCUCCI
“In her apartment, the scent of paint enfolds her. Some pieces she did right away. Fast, a sort of expulsion of that time, a purge. Others sit within her longer, incandescent with importance, images that keep her company and turn with the passing days, memory-tinged and contoured with time before they make their way onto a canvas.”
From “When the World Goes Quiet” by Glan Sardar
Shared by artist Kim Marcucci
ELLEN ZIMMERMAN AND MARK ZIMMERMAN
"My photographic images often draw from nature, especially from the magnificence of trees. Mark creates distinctive pieces on a lathe from a variety of woods. In this marriage of photography and woodturning, we celebrate a fall scene. The leaves in this golden-brown time have fallen from the trees. Still, there’s warmth in the afternoon sky, spreading light throughout, crowning the image with dramatic clouds. The unique wood-turned walnut frame creates a calming circle around this moment. Wood around wood; life around life."
Ellen Zimmerman and Mark Zimmerman
LISA NELSON RAABE
"Ink and liquid paint saturate onto thin Mulberry paper as circles and dots are formed. Layer upon layer, color blends, conceals and reveals forms between and within. Cut paper pieces and water-based spray paint add texture and opacity. Bit by bit, mark by mark the structure emerges."
Lisa Nelson Raabe
GERLINDE GELINA
"I start my paintings by intuitively applying collage and lines.
As I create, the canvas becomes my companion, and together, we tell stories.
The marks and lines convey the emotions swirling in my mind. Abstract art is my way of sharing those emotions.
I felt drawn to this show because it celebrates the way I create art and how artists like me capture a moment in time."
Gerlinde Gelina
GERALYN INOKUCHI
"What I especially like about “The Living Mark” is how the show emphasizes the expression of artists by celebrating their use of movement, rhythm and balance exhibited through mark-making. Looking at the works, you can almost see the dance of the artists that is recorded by the marks and colors they use. Anything from a slow graceful flow to a fast paced energetic outburst can be witnessed through the artists hand. As a viewer, it is this that pulls me into a work. To me, the sharing of this artistic energy binds us all together in the experience of humanity."
Geralyn Inokuchi
LEN ZEOLI
"The theme, Living Mark opened questions for me that led to an illuminating discovery. Is sculpture mark making, and if so, how so? Do cutting, shaping and assembling 3D artworks have gestural qualities generally associated with painting and drawing? It soon became obvious that the answer was “Yes.” The lines made to cut out components or the marks that show where to remove material for shaping are long gone before the piece is complete. Nevertheless, the hand of the maker touches every bit of material giving reality to its final form. None of my sculptures would exist without the tactile sense used to the fullest, for if a surface does not feel right it cannot be visually right. My hand, my fingers, perusing and caressing my work, use my aesthetic sense to form the shape, highlight the colors and determine the patterns that result. Indirect? Maybe a little. But absolutely real."
Len Zeoli
RACHEL KIRK
"The evidence of an artist’s hand, the motion captured in the raw marks of a drawing, is a fundamental artifact of human expression. Marks are capable of communicating charged emotion, which is something I’ve sought to achieve in my art ever since the first time I stood in front of and experienced the masterful scribbles of a Twombly painting."
Rachel Kirk
ANNE LEVEQUE
"Painting is like the first wind catching the sail of my boat and in this very instance of the wind - or the brush -the day has instantly changed and the wind is at my back."
Anne Leveque
VIKTORIA FORD
"I find mark making a journey that parallels life. One day, one mark, how can I make each addition lively and beautiful?"
Viktoria Ford
BOB CONGE
"It is the unseen mark of influence that binds our freedom of choice to the profit of others.”
Bob Conge
“Lobbyist For Big Tobacco” "Congress Babble"
TOM MCINTIRE
"I don't believe in God, but I believe the present moment is sacred. Art for me slows and captures time, building moment on moment into something wonderful when it works and at least a record of the journey when it does not. Mark-making expresses the splendor our eyes and brains absorb with each passing second."
Tom McIntire
NINA BELFOR
"Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Edvard Munch all have in common a distinctive way of creating drawing, paintings and prints through the use of mark-making, and each has been an important influence on my own methods of making art. For me, the mark is a data point, an individual response or observation, and when seen in conglomerate, these data points create a vision and narrative. The type of mark-making can lend an emotional tone to the narrative, and a variety, when juxtaposed, as in Rembrandt’s prints, create a rich world. The artist uses the mark like the writer uses a pattern of words, to create and direct us through the flow of a story."
Nina Belfor
VALERIE ORDAS
"God in me creates my art to heal me."
Valerie Ordas
ANGELITA SURMON
"I was drawn to the 11th Annual Living Mark because I am intrigued by artists’ mark making. Everyone finds their path to expression in their own unique way. Gathering artists together to illustrate the variety of paths provided a great opportunity to me."
Angelita Surmon
MARY MILLAN KLUNK
"Ever grateful for nature’s sights, textures, colors and power, I sing their praises through my painting."
Mary Millan Klunk
KAREN KURKA JENSEN
"My sumi-e work and process stems from ancient China where the importance has always been on mark-making using the traditional (and simple) materials of bamboo brush, sumi-e ink and very thin, very absorbent rice paper. The practice of sumi-e involves using those materials to create bold, expressive strokes that capture the essence of a subject, rather than its physical details. For me, sumi-e is the perfect medium for expressing my spiritual beliefs and exploring my innermost thoughts and emotions, conveying those ideas through my work to my audience for their own personal meditation and contemplation."
Karen Kurka Jensen
SHIN'EI ALISON BROWN
"I liken my works drawn, painted, intaglio and woodblock printed as akin to fingerprints, distinctly my own, yet of the nature of things."
Shin'ei Alison Brown
ANNA RYBAT
"Mark-making can make a difference in our lives. However small the mark, when many are gathered in one place (“Wherever two or more are gathered…”) the effect can - and does change the world. A scientist (Edward Lorenz) once posed the question: Can the flap of a butterfly wings in Costa Rica affect weather in another country? It promoted discussion and theories worldwide and the discussion continues. My painting exhibits an atmospheric background with tiny butterflies randomly inhabiting the space, and with the beating of their wings, they create small fluctuations in the air, which create small fluctuations in the biosphere. Our biosphere is delicate, as are the butterflies. Both need to be cared for and protected."
ANna RybaT
PAM HAUNSCHILD
"I find mark-making a very satisfying way of expressing the `-patterns found in nature – in the case the ebb and flow of tidal currents in estuaries, which nourish all the plants and animals found there."
Pam Haunschild
MARY FRISBEE JOHNSON
"Pacific Waters is a series of ink drawings depicting the beaches and bays of the central Oregon Coast. As I walk my dog along the shore, I photograph stretches of water with my iPhone – casually, quickly – capturing tiny, personally-observed pieces of the vast incessant motion going on concurrently all over the world. I am fascinated with how water changes depending on light, weather, time, wind, tide, and river flow. I listen to the myriad sounds of the ocean: gurgle, spit, splash, chitter, boom, drip, murmur. These words help me to invent descriptive marks with my brushes and ink. The shapes of Pacific waters are endless in their variety and infinitely fascinating."
Mary Frisbee Johnson
SUSANNE TIERNEY
Title : Filtered
Filtered and covered marks are at the base of this piece.
In this image, dark marks hold a perceived space as seemingly
temporal. Lines converge and a free play of elements appeal to my
senses through pearlescent mediums. My process is an unearthing
that I experience as visual archaeology or an untangling of a daydream.
Susanne Tierney
STERLING GROSS
"Living Mark resonated with me because my work is very much about breaking down why we feel the need to create in the first place. Is it for self-expression? Or to leave a legacy, proof that we existed and were here? Or to capture things we cannot express in words? Maybe it's all of those, maybe it's none. Every artist has their own reason. For me, it’s trying to figure out how it started, what those first artists must have felt.
My art likens back to primeval eras, back to small marks on the walls of caves. Reminders of times gone by. My work doesn’t need to be taken too seriously or academically interpreted. I’m getting back to basics and experiencing what it feels like to put pigment on my skin and slam it against a surface. It’s messy. It’s not complex. It’s far from perfect. But so am I. Who isn’t? What’s important is that it's fun."
Sterling Gross
JERRY SVOBODA
For me, the flow of drawing and painting goes like this:
Make a mark,
see it, feel it,
make another mark
When the marks come to LIFE the flow feels great:
Make a mark
believe it!, Love it!
make another mark
Jerry Svoboda
CHRISTINE HARRISON
“Art making is my process of living.”
Christine Harrison
