Mark Rediske | ARTIST INTERVIEW
In Conversation | Mark Rediske
Foster/White Gallery: Your paintings are full of rich, bold colors. What about these colors draws you to them?
Mark Rediske: I am drawn to color with a visceral emotional impact. I grew up in Minnesota where there was a heightened sense of seasonal change. There was the stark intensity of winter, the revival of spring, that enveloping warmth of summer and the blazing intensity of fall. I spent a lot of time at our summer lake cabin. The luminous impact of sky and water, sunrise and sunset, has had a profound lifelong impact on me.
F/WG: Visitors always closely examine your paintings. Will you elaborate on the techniques you use?
MR: Over the years I have transitioned through a variety of mediums and techniques. The one constant is that I have always searched for ways to push the medium beyond the norm to deliver a rich and textured surface that is unique and personal. I use layering, scraping and over-painting to create a complex and intimate surface. I then distill the work with additional layers, either opaque or semi-transparent to yield a historical record of process and reaction. I rely entirely on intuition as to when a painting is finished. I need to explore and modify along the way, but seldom struggle with knowing when a work is ultimately completed.
Mark Rediske, Monterrey, mixed media on panel, 26 x 48 in.
F/WG: You have said that you aim to create consuming atmospheres in your works. Describe some of the environments you depict?
MR: My recent paintings primarily reference landscape. I attempt to create a luminous atmosphere that can be interpreted as a time of day, a memory of place, or an imagined possibility. The titles pertain to places I have been, places of interest and a conjuring of infinite potential.
F/WG: Light plays an important role in your works, how do you incorporate light either in your work or in your studio? (eg. big light-filled windows, working in the morning, balance of colors, etc.)
MR: Light is an essential element both in my paintings and in my studio. I am so very fortunate that we were able to design and build my studio. Hence the studio has ten-foot-tall ceilings and a twelve-foot wall of glass that looks out to our back garden. Our landscaped yard is a source of inspiration that is always in flux.
F/WG: Given your processes, how do you see your work straddling the worlds of natural and man-made?
MR: Nature is the base genesis for my work, filtered through the lens of memory and experience. Every day is an abundance of rejuvenation and awe in this amazingly beautiful spot on this spinning blue-green planet. My work strives to synthesize the wonder of the natural world with the emotional realm of our ambient constructed terrain.
F/WG: What new ways are you finding to be creative during this imposed shelter-in-place?
MR: Let me just say… the house has never been cleaner! Who knew swiffering the walls was an actual thing? And god help the weed that tries to make a go of it in our garden, not now, not on my watch!
Thank you Mark for taking the time to sit down with us, and for sharing your beautiful garden!
To learn more about Mark Rediske and to see available works please visit www.fosterwhite.com