Artist/Traveler Interview: Mark Thompson - Capturing the North

I was immediately drawn to the moody, lonely landscapes of the artist Mark Thompson’s paintings when I met him in December 2019 at the Pouch Cove Artist Residency in Newfoundland. During our time of overlap, I was impressed by his thoughtful and committed path of exploration through painting and his nuanced capturing of the northern light. He’s shared his artist journey with us in the interview below:

Thanks for sharing your story with us Mark!
To begin, can you give us a brief description of your background - where did you grow up, did you go to art school, where are you based now?

I grew up in the Fens, an area of wetlands in the East of England. The flat landscape of black earth and hand cut rivers had an ongoing effect on my work and after completing my undergrad degree at The Slade School of Fine Art in London, painting took me out into the world. I’m now based between the UK and Canada.

When did you first realize you were an artist and how did that define your life choices to follow? Were you encouraged by your family/teachers to pursue art?

By the time I started at school, it was becoming clear that I needed to decode the world through visual imagery. My parents and teachers were quite gentle with me as I proceeded to decorate the margins of my school books with drawings of tiny birds. At around the age of fourteen an art teacher took me more under his wing and I began to seriously explore my ultimate direction. Painting has led me around by the nose ever since.   

How did your work evolve over the years, and what is your preferred medium?

I am a painter mostly working with oils. My work is more or less representational, but the process of making draws from both abstraction and very traditional painting practices. Most of the way through college I pursued a very stripped down yet painterly abstraction, but as time went on I realized I was avoiding what was enduringly important to me - landscape. It has drifted between highly urban spaces and wilderness, but always with its feet firmly planted in trying to create a painted world. It’s a world of memory and non linear time, and is one that keeps me perpetually seeking to understand its meaning.  

I sometimes work with watercolour to make preparatory drawings for the larger works, but there’s something about the flexibility of oil and its ability to be both dense and ephemeral at the same time, the make it a life long journey. If it was good enough for Rembrandt, it’s good enough for me!

You have traveled to many parts of the world, why are you drawn to travel as an artist? How does it shape your work and lifestyle?

Travel has the great benefit of throwing you slightly off balance. The routines we rely on in everyday life are stripped away and we are forced to reexamine what is actually important to us. As a painter, certainly as one concerned with a sense of place, the process of absorbing the world and its subsequent trickle down through an internal emotional landscape, is, at least to me, vital.

Travel does however undermine and make one question, and perhaps seek to reestablish ones sense of home, in the fundamental sense of the word. Over the years, be it in a tent or a hotel room, I have sought to keep this question open and flexible, yet what I have found is how little one actually needs to be self contained and happy. The poetry in these objects has become part of my sense of security. 

You seem particularly drawn to northern landscapes (which I can very much relate to). What is it about the north that attracts you?

Northern landscapes do fascinate me, and I have felt compelled to try to understand this for more than twenty years. I began traveling back in 1997 after winning the Duveen Scholarship, which took me to Iceland, and haven’t really stopped since. There is something about northerly latitudes that pares down the landscape, revealing the drawing inherent in its features; its harsh climate indirectly becomes the lens through which beauty displays itself. These places ultimately become timeless, and that has hooked itself permanently into my own journey through the painted world.

How has that influenced your choice of using a limited palette in neutral, cool colors?

My limited palette evolved directly as a reaction to the landscape I grew up in. It has shifted over the years, but at one point it became restricted to one dark mix of Indigo, Raw Umber and Olive Green, one grey mix of Paynes and Davy’s Grey, and White. The emotional connection we have to certain colours can become overpowering, and I was struggling to understand what I wanted from that element. I felt like I was almost manipulating myself into feeling a certain way during the process, so limiting things became a necessary way through.

In recent years I have found myself to be chasing colour again, and one thing that the Pouch Cove Residency has opened up in the work is an entrance back in to an extended palette. I have adopted a system of optical greys or colours that neutralize each other like Ultramarine and Transparent Oxide Red. There’s both a subtlety and a strength in these that I can push to create colour casts, taking the paintings closer to memory. 

You arrived at the Pouch Cove Residency last December, and as of this writing (in late-April 2020) you are still there as an artist in residence. What brought you there and why have you stayed so long?

The Pouch Cove Foundation residency program is an unusual one in that it’s by invitation only. The director James Baird had been following my work on Instagram and contacted me out of the blue, offering me the chance to explore my work ‘at the end of the world’ in Newfoundland. My only question was when can I come! I was initially due to stay for two months, but when offered an exhibition there with artist Sara Chaar at the end of what would be a third month, I decided to extend my stay. The landscape of Newfoundland has been deeply informative to my work, and James has kindly allowed me to stay on. It has been a rare and extraordinary opportunity to truly explore my work in an uninterrupted way.   

You have even chosen to stay at Pouch Cove during the COVID-19 lockdown. How has that been for you in such an isolated and remote environment?

Quiet. Pouch Cove is a very peaceful place anyway, but the lockdown has put the residency schedule on hold for at least the next few months, so the building is eerily silent… In some ways it’s just an accentuated version of the solitary nature of painting, so I’m used to it. That said, I was very much looking forward to working alongside the artists that were due to attend. 

Speaking of residencies, what do you like about them in general and anything you want to share about some of your experiences with our readers? Highlights, lowlights? Advice?

Residencies are a wonderful opportunity to devote uninterrupted time to your work, and because they are (usually) specifically limited in duration, they tend to bring things into focus. Adapting to a new studio can take some time however, and carving out ways to work in that space can be a challenge. Once established though, things tend to flow in unexpected ways.

Being in a different landscape, no matter what kind of work one makes, has an effect, and that has to be taken into account as you move forward. One thing to get used to is how loud ones thoughts are in the initial silence. Once the mind begins to settle, a new sense of normal begins to establish itself. Friendships forged at Residencies can also become very strong, and are a wonderful way to find unexpected emotional connections. The best advice I can offer is to go in with an open mind and allow it to take its own shape. 

I’m wondering if there have been many challenges to your career/practice overall, and if so, how did you overcome them?

Over the years there have been many challenges to overcome. As cliched as it sounds, a life in art comes with an inherent instability. It’s a career path that isn’t embarked upon for financial reward; that may come, but it’s not the norm. It’s also a vocation that casts most of us into obscurity, regardless of talent. I have been lucky to be able to continue painting, and gain a little recognition for it, but it has required certain sacrifices. The main challenge becomes squaring those with yourself. I do however have the smile of a man who knows his life’s work will never be done. 

In this time of social media promotion, how important has that been to your career and in what way? Are there other ways you promote your work?

Social media is inherently a double edged sword, and it has been both incredibly useful and a time drain of epic proportions. Facebook particularly became intrusive and I recently decided to distance myself from it. Instagram, being so image driven, has been wonderful as a visual diary, and has enabled me to connect with artists and collectors all over the world. It might be best to say that I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but I try to be as open about the work as I can be without having it intrude upon my private life. 

In an ever more internet heavy world, I have to keep in mind that I make physical, real world objects, that people interact with in a visceral way. A combination of web/app based galleries and physical representation seems to be the best of both worlds.   

Any final thoughts you want to share with us about being an artist/traveler?

Making art and traveling are so inextricably linked, they become part of the same process of self enlightenment. As previously mentioned, a life in art requires certain sacrifices, and at times we have to become familiar and accepting of failure, but the very action of doing it is an end in itself. It’s a rich life of uncertain beauties - ones that hold great personal meaning.

——————————————————-***————————————————————-

See more of Mark’s work at www.markthompson-artist.com
instagram: @markthompsonartist

To learn more about artist residencies, check out my online course here: