About Me
Born in 1983, Mark Chadwick is a contemporary fine artist who lives and works in the United Kingdom. Chadwick studied Fine Art at Birmingham City University and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006 and Master of Arts in 2008. Specialising in abstract painting Chadwick’s work explores ideas surrounding authorship, process and chance encounters.
In my current series of fluid paintings, the unique display of forms and colours are brought together by the artist’s hand but manipulated through the use of machines or natures forces. Some paintings are spun or shaken while others rely upon reactions between materials or gravity to allow the painting to almost form itself. The paintings are built up of many layers of paint, each creating it’s own flowing abstract surface left open to interpretation by the viewer.
The paint is manipulated in a number of different ways each driven by ideas surrounding process, materiality and chance encounters. The unique display of forms and colours are brought together by the artist’s hand but manipulated though the use of machines or natures forces. Some paintings are spun or shaken while others rely upon reactions between materials or gravity to allow the painting to almost form itself. The paintings are built up of many layers of paint, each creating it’s own flowing abstract surface left open to interpretation by the viewer.
I turned to spin painting after an interest in the use of machines in art. My paintings rely upon the predetermined set-up of the machine as it’s the machine itself that becomes the paintbrush. After building my own spinning machine, I can continuously make changes to the speed, motion and direction to produce resulting paintings that are controlled to be uncontrolled. The paintings can be built up of many layers of paint which is thrown again and again over the surface of the canvas. As the painting is spinning the fluid paint is forced outwards by centrifugal forces leaving a number of effects that can be manipulated.
My tilt paintings are a result of many layers of fluid paint being tilted and stretched across a surface. The paint records layer after layer of the artists movements leaving mysterious forms and transparent whispers of colour. Once the creative act is under way, the poured paint is only manipulated through a tilting process, no tools or brushes are ever used. The resulting paintings are an encounter between process, chance and the artist’s decision making actions.
My flow circle arrangements are based on visual representations from the mathematical study of circle packing. The arrangements follow strict rules, the circles must touch one another, no overlapping and must stay within a distance from the edge. Contained by the system of circles, the poured fluid paint is free to flow from one circle to the next. The fluid paint not only reacts to it’s concoction and application but also to its containment in an ordered but at the same time chaotic manner.
The fluid portraits are an experiment utilising the paints fluidity to form representations of human heads. The paint is controlled by viscosity and timing to hold forms but at the same time the paint is free to move. They stand on a knife edge of ultimately melting away or holding themselves together.