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Mark Williams MFA

      

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Mark Williams was born in 1975 in Columbus, Ohio and showed artistic ability and interest at a young age.  His undergraduate studies at Miami University and at the Lacoste School of the Arts in France focused on painting and printmaking.  After receiving his BFA, he moved to New York City where he worked at galleries including the Leo Castelli Gallery and for artists Sean Scully and Donald Sultan.  During this time he formed the gallery Live Paint Fine Art in his Greenwich Village apartment.  Further work in printmaking took place at the Art Students League, the School of Visual Arts, and the Rhode Island School of Design.  Graduate study brought him to the University of Connecticut where he earned his MFA degree in 2004.  He is now focusing on making and exhibiting his artwork as well as teaching in community colleges and working for the internationally known artist Sol LeWitt.  Mark is also actively pursing a full time job teaching printmaking at a college or university.

Artist's Statement:
Since the start of the United States military presence in Iraq, I have been making artwork based on the inexpensive, small, plastic toy soldiers that so many young children have played with for generations.  To introduce the concept of war to children in the form of a toy or game is to introduce them to it as perhaps . . . something fun, something to aspire to do in real life when they grow up. 

Wars have been fought for thousands of years and have caused the deaths of millions of people, disrupting families and leaving children without parents.  On some level, the iconic poses of these toy soldiers may have been embedded into our subconscious.  The toys are in fighting poses and appear victorious.  There are not toys of this plastic variety that come injured, dead, missing body parts, or begging for mercy.  If these toys could be seen as archetypal forms then my action of obscuring them with Play-Doh could be an attempt to suppress them, to put an end to them.  By doing this with children’s toys, it makes the gesture with irrational innocence of a child who is completely unaware of politics and history.

http://www.livepaint.org/