A Montreal based artist with a background in writing and teaching, Mark Philip Venema works in drawing, printmaking, painting and photography among other media. He is a graduate from Concordia University with a Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Art, at Montreal,
Quebec, Canada.
Click on images to enlarge and read informaton.
Please contribute to and follow my currently running campaign to help make it a success:
http://www.indiegogo.com/Entrenched-Thought
Entrenched Thought, an earthwork, performance and sculpture, as a peace initiative at the 11th DMZ Art Fesitval held with the support of the Seokjang-ri Art Museum, South Korea 6/5/2011 - 7/5/2011
"Non finito. We are unfinished works.” - MFA thesis project. Encaustic on wood panel, 2008
Archives of Innocence: a collaboration with my daughters - Photography with letterpress, 2006, 2007.
Inside out consumer: Self-portraits from within - Photography and altered consumer packaging, 2005.
Printmaking from 2003 to 2005.
"We spent the winter travelling in Italy, Spain and Portugal, my wife and I pushing our three daughters in strollers observing, gaping at, endless rooms of artwork in palazzos. The girls put up with it, looked at Botticelli's work, made benches in the galleries into playgrounds, and we pushed. After weeks of this I began to suffer from an aberration of the Stendhal syndrome, I wept and uttered glossalalia before Renaissance masterpieces.
In particular were images of Christ's descent from the cross or 'depositions': Pontormo's in Santa Felicita, Florence; Rosso Fiorentino's in Volterra; Quentin Metsys' in Lisbon, Bellini's Pieta in Venice and then finally, I nearly broke down covering my face before the deposition by Roger Van der Weyden at del Prado in Madrid. I became ill, went to the hospital for chest pains in Lisbon, had various electro-cardiograms.
Whether I am a fanatic who admires the iconoclasm of Savonarola or a mystic who swoons before the contorted figures of El Greco or a humanist who revels in 'Il divino' Michelangelo, one thing is for certain, Simon Schama is on to something about the power of art: 'paint paint, blood blood, get it?'
The experience of observing and contemplating 'Art' should not be a pleasant afternoon visit to a local gallery; it should on some level be an encounter with the divine; it should lead to violent introspection, tears of repentance, cries of joy; 'Art' should mess with your soul and spirit, creating a discomfort with things as they are; it should do no less than make you see the world anew."
~ Mark Philip Venema, March 2009, Montreal.