About
I'm Mark Jeffreys, an artist from the UK now living in the Netherlands. I grew up in the Cotswolds and lived in London for many years.
I travelled from the city to the country and back, a lot. The more I did, the more I thought about the separation between urban and rural land-scapes. The definitions of space and environment are important to my work. (Even when landscape is represented by a picture on a postcard, it possesses more landscape than would first appear once sent.) Land-scapes are a multitude of interconnected spaces.
Oil paint has a depth of colour that I enjoy exploring as a vital part of the image-making process. The physical attributes of the painted surface might be seen as analogue to scaped land. If a frame is used it imposes structure, like the edges of paths and causeways or hedgerows or roads as borders; if it is not, this space floats free.
By challenging assumptions related to painting I find a space to simultaneously explore ideas about what landscape is. My landscape includes my internal landscape, my thoughts and actions in relation to my environment. Through this lens I recover remnants of being somewhere, seen through a haze of past encounters with spaces places and feelings.
For the past few years I've lived in the Netherlands. This brings its own influences into my work as I consider the ever-present proximity of water and the strange feeling that wherever I stand, a least in the area of Amsterdam, I'm likely standing below sea level and should be underwater.
CV
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 - Art Diagonale, Austria
2019 - Stages of Life, Harrow Arts Centre, London
2018 - Somewhere in Time II, C. Y. Tung Maritime Museum, Shanghai
2018 - Somewhere in Time I, West Bund, Shanghai
2018 - MFA Graduate Show, Wimbledon College of Arts
2017 - Otherworlds 1, 5th Base Gallery, Brick Lane, London
2017 - One That Holds Everything, Crypt Gallery, St. Pancras Church, London
2017 - 17m2, UAL High Holborn, London
2017 - Life in a Shoebox, Back Room Gallery, London
2017 - Mixed Relationships, China Design Centre, London
2015 - Looking Sound, live visual arts & music performance, London
2014 - ACME Open Studios, Robinson Road, London
2012 - The Big Event, Stoke Newington Library Gallery, London
2010 - Harvest Moon, The Troubadour, Earls Court, London
Residencies
July-August 2023 - Art Diagonale V, Austria
December 2018 – ICCI Art Valley Residency, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Education
2016-2018 - MFA Fine Art, University of the Arts London
(Wimbledon College of Art. Grade: Distinction)
2000-2003 - BA (Hons) Fine Art, Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, Banbury
(De Montfort University)
1999-2000 - Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, College of West Anglia
Awards
University of the Arts London Vice Chancellor's Scholarship
Curatorial / Volunteering
2016 - 2019 - Window 71
An exhibition space in north London helping new artists gain exposure.
Work held in private collections around the world.
Weather alerts in Europe