Interview with artist Mark Blaney
Mark Blaney is a Russellville artist originally from Michigan. His paintings and even his ceramic sculptures celebrate the beauty and mystery of light and shadow. Mark has exhibited his work around the country and has earned numerous awards including awards at the 2000 and 2001 Delta Exhibitions. His paintings and ceramic mural installations are in private and corporate collections throughout the US. More of Mark’s work can be seen at Greg Thompson Fine Art in Little Rock and Justus Fine Art Gallery in Hot Springs as well as at his website markblaneyart.com.
AAS: Mark, I believe you are originally from Indiana? What brought you to Arkansas?
MB: I was raised in Michigan and had a bus ticket for Arkansas in my back pocket under my gown when I received my high school diploma. The next morning, I boarded that greyhound and headed south to stay on my grandparents’ Ozark farm. The following months I painted and drew the landscapes and people in the rugged hills, before I was to begin art school in Ohio. It was then that the rural lifestyle took hold. So as fate would have it, after following the art path, I married and help grow a family in Kentucky. From there, we were invited to try Arkansas and moved here so my young ones could witness and know my generational family of steady farm people – their people.
A couple of months before Covid hit, my partner and I split up. I had farmed with her for almost ten years near Bloomington, Indiana. The farm sold and I returned here. During those years I ran three green houses and we produced an average of 250 pounds per year of organic berries (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries) and veggies. I maintained a productive studio and divided my time between art and gardening. The farm was bordered on three sides by an immense state forest, and we could walk for miles right out our back door.
Now after a long and varied life path, I once again find myself living and making art in the same Ozark hills and streams, living on the land owned by one of my sons just up the hill from the old homestead. I’m resettled here near Russellville and am gardening on new ground with two of my sons and their families.
AAS: Where did you receive your art training?
MB: My father, Don Blaney, was a successful portrait painter and a corporate art director, and we had a great relationship around art. I remember what turned out to be an early epiphany – we attended a huge retrospect traveling Van Gogh exhibit when I was around 12. Upon seeing the work from his time in Arles, France, specifically the orchards and how they related to the many Michigan orchards surrounding us, I was mesmerized by the pure energized beauty of the paintings.
My dad and I painted together outdoors and regularly spent time at museums in Michigan and Ohio. He was drawn to John Singer Sargent, and I was pulled into the impressionist room. My mother Sylvia (still happily with us) was a seamstress and created her own suits for her banking position. She had her little studio, and he had his. They were both a big influence for a budding artist.
I spent a lot of time during my high school years self-training at plein air painting and drawing directly from nature. I split my time between drawing the people and buildings in the heart of old Detroit and hitch hiking out to the woods and fields and forgotten farms of the Michigan landscape. I began drawing from nudes in the nearby college in my junior year of high school. I attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Ohio, for 3.5 years studying drawing, sculpture and painting. From then and until now I simply made an active studio a central part of my life. I began to learn gardening in 1970. This and the art practice have enhanced each other as a lifestyle and a source of work ethic and reward. I have been fortunate to have helped raise three very good sons and now as their lives have bloomed into family and careers, I am near and dear to the grandkids anytime there is time.
AAS: In looking over your body of work, lighting seems extremely important to you. Your paintings capture so beautifully the colors of an early morning sunrise or late twilight.
MB: Growing up in the 50’s it was understood around my house that if you were indoors and not ill, there were probably chores just waiting within reach. So, the great outdoors had quite a draw for us. As long as we got home when the street lights came on all was well. All we needed was a friend or two, a bike and a peanut butter sandwich. Being out in nature remained an essential part of my life and making art seemed to be part of seeing the changes around me in nature and keeping a record of those good days. Many times, I would get up well before dawn and sit on the garage roof and stare peacefully into the approach of dawn trying to commit to memory color transitions and the effect of new light on the land and trees. The golden hour of the setting sun was also a beautiful time. I started learning about the lively colors within shadows. The impressionists and post painters were very instructive about color harmony and dissonance. Color play can be very much like music if the passages carry the eye around the painting in a good way. I love to be surprised by a random drawing of color as an understructure of a composition, very subconscious and intuitive.
“Color play can be very much like music if the passages carry the eye around the painting in a good way.”
AAS: One example I love, really love, is Zinnias at Dawn. The way the airiness of the background contrasts the flowers of the foreground in the light is just lovely.
Zinnias at Dawn, 40” x 48”, oil on canvas
MB: Thank you, it is one of my favorites too. I have always needed and loved the very beginning of sun light and breeze on a treed landscape. The almost lifting of the night’s shadow and the mixing of fresh new light with the wet dewy land.
In the shadows of dawn there is a vapor of colored light veiling the trees and letting only the strong light pierce the space onto the field and trees – it’s hard to describe. We grew many flower beds, and the zinnias were near the windows, it was so fine to have them inside and outside and all around. Watching my partner gather her flowers was a singular joy in life, so painting about this was easy. While treating the figure as I did the trees, her form and the flowers emerged from dim light and color harmony into the more contrasting and textural foreground. Zinnias are a real treat.
AAS: Another wonderful piece is Walker in Wild Roses. Here, there is more sunlight but still an emotional piece. Dogs appear here too. Are you a dog person?
Walker in Wild Roses, 41” x 49”, oil on canvas
MB: The Walker (also my first son’s name) is an homage to all the nice strolls homeward at dusk with dogs leading the way and trailing behind. Here’s to them also for their curious bone and endless ‘want to.’
It is one of those in progress pieces due to the familiar feel like a journal, I guess. I have had some good dogs and have known several, but aren’t they something though! Especially let loose to be our alter ego in the wild.
AAS: You have also painted some wonderful horses in winter scenes. Moonlight on the Cedar Brake is so lovely. Would you talk about some of those pieces?
Moonlight on the Cedar Brake, 3.5’ x 5’, oil on canvas
MB: Thanks for asking about Moonlight on the Cedar Brake. It is a pivotal piece for me and perhaps holds the most mystery for me. I am very moved by the horse form and have always studied and been around them but never owned any. There is a natural connection through art history, of course. I love drawing the human form and the horse is an extension of that admiration. The ‘Moonlight' piece allowed me to think of harsh conditions forcing the horses to thaw an area out of the wind. The dark and almost steamy ground they create is in close harmony to the clouds of breath enveloping them. The chosen spot is a brake (a great western term) of dense cedar. I wanted to have them be so similar to the cedar shapes they would almost disappear. Having them moon lit on this cold and clear starry night just thrilled me. The painting turned out to be one of my most colorful works even with its simple palette. These horse studies represent a resilience and an assured purpose in this ambivalent time.
AAS: Before we talk more about your paintings, I want to ask you about your ceramics. You have done several major ceramic installations for private and public spaces. Would you talk about that work and your wonderful balcony scenes?
The Singing Quilt, 40” x 60”, painted ceramic/mixed media
MB: Yes, ceramics. What a wonder of science and art and I am lucky to be studying it. I like making these sculpted paintings. The shadows become a color element in the design and adds some complexity as I paint.
The balcony scenes came about after I visited areas where I witnessed women emerging from old windows and caring for cloth. This was a nice general idea to compose around. I intend the pieces to be seen as a bird’s-eye view or from a neighboring porch. They are wall hung to seem to be gently emerging into the host space. The figures are stoneware and set in a matrix of acrylic/Portland cement stucco on wood and then oil painted. The cloths are cast fiberglass.
AAS: You have some wonderful paintings at CARTI Cancer Center and UAMS. I walked by at least two of yours at UAMS every day before I retired from there. Your paintings have a calming quality and totally fit in a medical setting.
CARTI Cancer Center Commission, 5’ x 7’, oil on canvas, Little Rock, Arkansas
MB: I worked for years in maintenance departments of three nursing and assisted living facilities, a major hospital, and finished by being supervisor over maintenance in a nice small country hospital in Dardanelle, Arkansas. Being around and serving the needs of dedicated workers who try to aid and ease the suffering of others generated empathy and respect for the elderly and ill and for caregivers. The chance to offer something more than keeping the lights on was a nice honor. The commissions were generated and facilitated by Greg Thompson Fine Art in Little Rock. Thanks to the energy and wisdom of my friend Greg Thompson and his team, I have been involved in many private sales and larger projects here and around the state. The CARTI piece came about by picking a great little swim area here up on Big Piney Creek and peopled it with characters enjoying the cool clear water. I think it offered a sense of peace for folks waiting around in the stress of being in a medical facility.
AAS: I don’t know how you define your style, but there is a painting that seems a little different to me but is just terrific. It is Sunset Forest Floor. Would you talk about that piece?
Sunset Forest Floor, 30” x 40”, oil on canvas
MB: After having finished several representational projects like the CARTI, I missed the intuitive act of drawing with color. I chose a flat perspective study of tree trunks set in a closely grown carpet of wildflower shapes to allow for purely color work. The vermillion field is continuous throughout and the flower shapes are very similar as well except a dual color change in the flowers themselves allowing a field/object shift, which in this piece creates a ‘shadow’ from the tree. Only two colors change, yet an atmospheric shift occurs to my eye and adds a mystery to the piece and a sense of shadow and space. I was schooled in the Josef Albers color theory, and all this is like good jazz, just random enough to lean into ‘off -balance’ and then brought into equilibrium by balancing forms in the design.
AAS: Your work has been shown all around the US and outside the US, most recently at Justus Fine Art Gallery in Hot Springs and soon at the Argenta Arts District in North Little Rock. I remember when I interviewed John Gaudin and Corky Patton, who helped create the Argenta Arts District, John said your painting Backyard was one of their favorite pieces in their collection. What do you think it is about your paintings that make them so admired and appreciated?
MB: I am truly happy and content that people have my work near them in places that bring them pleasure. I have borrowed many ideas, colors, line, and passages from art history. I like to bring simple stories of tender moments up into the realm of ‘high’ art. For instance, people simply at a bus stop waiting very close together and all looking for the same thing but isolated in their separate lives, or a woman engulfed in bellowing laundry as she is framed in the movement and color, or the marriage of landscapes and clouds.
One of my main collectors, Malcolm Dalglish of Oolitic Music Group (renowned musician/ composer) and his wife Judith Klein (retired physician) of Bloomington, Indiana, have been a constant inspiration for me and have over the years added many of my works to their wonderful collection. I am also showing work in Spencer, IN with Juniper Fine Art.
AAS: Looking back on your career and your current work, how has your work evolved – or has it?
MB: When I look at older work, I am struck at my good fortune to have hesitated and looked longer into fleeting moments and to journal them. I think some of my work has kept me in the practice of gazing into natural forms and allowing me the pleasure of seeing negative spaces in tree foliage, for instance, as if they were solid forms. Quite abstract and mind blowing, really, as when one looks at Henry Moore’s large bone pieces and the intertwining of the solid forms with the spacious forms defined by the metal or wood. I think my figurative work has improved and can be attributed to my good fortune of being close to another human day and night. I don’t intend to copy nature but to have the ease of seeing be transferred to an ongoing record and celebration of being here.
