Mark Halsey

Working on a large scale, my paintings are constructed with traditional processes using oil and acrylic paint, but also incorporate stencils, screen-print and airbrush work to build up a ‘collage’ aesthetic in which multiple image sources cross-pollinate. Some of the images I use are personal, some universal, and though the final composition can be ambiguous there is a sense of an underlying narrative – often with a social commentary.

Consumerism and the visual language of advertising – both current and historic – are prominent in my works, which therefore often have a playful, placing absurd quality on first viewing, but which subsequently reveal a more ambiguous and sometimes provocative perspective on the world around us.

Within my latest work, the narratives I create operate by key images in a ‘resting place’ that is alien to them, confusing the source image. This approach is a generative act, rejecting old certainties and opening up new meanings and ways

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Working on a large scale, my paintings are constructed with traditional processes using oil and acrylic paint, but also incorporate stencils, screen-print and airbrush work to build up a ‘collage’ aesthetic in which multiple image sources cross-pollinate. Some of the images I use are personal, some universal, and though the final composition can be ambiguous there is a sense of an underlying narrative – often with a social commentary.

Consumerism and the visual language of advertising – both current and historic – are prominent in my works, which therefore often have a playful, placing absurd quality on first viewing, but which subsequently reveal a more ambiguous and sometimes provocative perspective on the world around us.

Within my latest work, the narratives I create operate by key images in a ‘resting place’ that is alien to them, confusing the source image. This approach is a generative act, rejecting old certainties and opening up new meanings and ways of understanding postmodern culture.