Biography

Michael Marks was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and spent his formative years growing up in rural Georgia. In eighth grade he acquired a set of oil paints from his grandmother, a MAD magazine from an older cousin, and took a computer coding class at an after school program. He has lived most of his artistic life between these experiences.

An advocate for the arts, he was a co-founder of the ThreeCitiesGroup artist collective, which was active for over a decade across the Southeast. He has worked with several art collectives, including Tiger Strikes Asteroid, alternative venues, art centers, and as a curator throughout his career. 

Specializing in painting, drawing, and printmaking, his creative work spans a range of materials and techniques and has been exhibited nationally and internationally in over eighty exhibitions in twenty states; in US cities including Greenville, Columbia, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Saint Louis, Austin, and Chicago, and internationally in Copenhagen, Denmark; Prague, Czec Republic; Perth, Australia; and Gimpo, South Korea. 

His writings on art and education have been published by Vasari Paints, Temporary Art Review, and the Paris College of Art Press. He has served as a board member for FATE (Foundations in Art: Theory and Education) and as Editor of FATE In Review, an academic journal focused on arts education and visual culture. He has served on the faculty at the SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities and the University of South Carolina Upstate. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Art in the Painting + Drawing area, and Chair of The Department of Art + Design at the South Carolina School of the Arts.

Statement

My work reflects my life as a human being and maker in the twenty-first century. Engaging a wide variety of creative processes, I use expanded definitions of painting, drawing, printmaking, installation, and virtual reality software to create visual experiences. In my practice, I incorporate high and low art sources and techniques, merging contemporary imagery with art historical references by utilizing collage and digital strategies. My work often blends the visual languages of classical painting, animation, illustration, and comics into a single, painted image, site specific works, or cultural artifacts.

As an artist interested in the traditions of narrative art, I use the past signifiers of visual history to tell stories about the present and future. My work interprets themes of science fiction, consumerism, environmental changes, symbolism, and my role as an artist in this world. In my work, objects, environments, animals, and figures often compete for real and imagined hierarchies or manipulate their surroundings. These actions are allegories for the struggles of individuals within society, our relationship to institutions, and to each other. They are moments that both reveal and obscure meaning and offer no clear solutions or easy interpretations. Within this assortment of images and environments, I invite viewers to contemplate and explore these visual possibilities, and to find questions they might take into the world.

What will our society be remembered for after we’re gone? What will we leave behind, when we are left to float in the void of space or the memories of others?