Mark Cullen
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Mark Cullen
"Still Life with Fruit"
Oil on canvas, 11" x 15"
"Still Life with Fruit"
Oil on canvas, 11" x 15"
Mark Cullen is an Irish artist, born in Dublin in 1960, who only started painting on a full-time basis in 2003. Since then he has exhibited his paintings in numerous exhibitions throughout Ireland, most notably at the Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibition in Dublin, the Eigse exhibition in Carlow and the Royal Ulster Academy annual exhibition in Belfast. He exhibits regularly with the Jorgensen Gallery and his distinctive paintings of scenes in and around the harbours of south County Dublin, and his still life paintings have won him a considerable following at the gallery. A distinctive stylistic feature that runs through Mark's paintings is the way that he leaves marks of his painting process visible in the finished artwork. He often paints his canvas with a strong shade of orange and outlines his composition in charcoal. As a painting progresses, colours are applied with brushes or a palette knife and are often scraped back, to reveal subtle highlights of the background colour, which heightens and enlivens his overall composition. In reference to his technique of painting Mark says "I play with depth, dimension, scale, and perspective so there is an uncertainty about the plane of the subject. My interest lies in texture and the simplicity of form and line rather than the detail, but always giving the sense of place or object."