Mark Spencer, Blue Baroque, 1998, oil on canvas, 48 x 48, private collection

Mark Spencer: Dark Resonance
June 6 – August 16, 2003 @ BMoCA

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of Dark Resonance, a solo exhibition of paintings and prints by Santa Fe artist, Mark Spencer, curated by Joan Markowitz. Spencer has been living and working in Santa Fe since the late 1970’s. He is one of New Mexico’s most highly regarded and accomplished artists, celebrated for a unique style combining a classically-inspired realist technique with surrealistic vision that addresses the contradictions and conundrum of life in the modern world. Dark Resonance features recent paintings and a selection of monotypes.

Presented in BMoCA’s West Gallery, curator Markowitz hopes to present a selection of Spencer’s images which will encourage the viewer to explore the intersection between the difficulty and disturbing meta-issues of contemporary life and its passion and beauty. “At first glance, the viewer is greeted by lusciously painted images. But lurking beneath the surfaces are darker offerings, a context which resonates with unfolding dramas,” Markowitz notes.

Mark Spencer was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1949. He received his art training at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, graduating in 1971. During his studies, Spencer began to employ a technique of underpainting his compositions with a combination of egg emulsion and varnish, a practice that was brought to prominence in the 16th century by Titian, the Venetian Renaissance master. This laborious (and seldom-used) process constitutes a primary component in the extraordinarily lush and luminous quality that has become a trademark of Spencer’s paintings. The highly labor-intensive nature of the egg emulsion / varnish technique allows Spencer to finish no more than a handful of major canvases in any given year.