"Lone Tusker" by Mark King Serigraph on Paper Artist's Proof 10/75 w/ CoA Great!

• MARK KING (b.1931)
• Lone Tusker
• Signed and numbered in pencil (along bottom)
• Serigraph on Paper
• Image: 39 x 32 in.
• Frame: 53 x 43 in.
• Executed in 1991, this work is the Artists Proof numbered 10/75
• 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, King sailed to England to attend Bournemouth College of Art, having determined to pursue painting, sculpture, architecture and theatre design. He subsequently 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. Small pencil sketches noting color and compositional motifs act as reminders of feelings and responses to events and vistas. From these two sources, King produces vibrant preliminary drawings in gouache, 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. 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. 
• King has carefully studied the old and modern masters from Cimabue and Massacio to Goya, Turner, Degas, and Bonnard. Fascinated with painting techniques, King meticulously layers colors, glazes and shapes as substrata for the five or ten percent of the acrylic paint that floats on top and forms the finished composition. The underpainting filters through to the surface creating depth and texture.
• Like the Impressionist Masters, Mark King uses his eye as a passive organ, confronting the visual field. Objective and detached, he considers himself an "unobserved observer." He explains, "I make no judgements about what I see -- there is no right or wrong -- it is there to be assimilated." King believes, "When there is no jamming of the cosmic forces influencing our receptivity, those energies and forces feed into us and it is those briefest fractions of a second when things flow." 
• King's versatility and zest for life transform everything he paints into strong patterns of brilliant color. His subtle understanding of how color, texture and paint interact is his strong point. Color conveys feelings and emotions in the creation of a timeless art, and now in the full maturity of his career, he has achieved superb mastery of his palette. (from )