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| "Homeland" |
Life is increasingly surreal, and a Daliesque strangeness pervades everything. I don't really mind, and kind of like it that way, although I prefer a more benign situation rather than the predominantly evil one in which we find ourselves today.
It makes sense, then, that I enjoy surrealist art.
Art that is surrealist, and that also reflects and comments on the strange and twisted realities that we live with, is even better. That describes the punch in the brain art of Mark Bryan.
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| "Ship Of State" |
This is the preamble from a 2016 interview with the artist:
"Alongside his political works, Mark also creates imagery which stems from significantly more unconscious origins, and which draw just as heavily, on the melange of 1950’s and ’60’s low budget sci-fi, psychedelic comics and surrealist works he was influenced by throughout his youth.
Regardless of which of these two distinct camps his work falls into, there are some things which are absolutely certain; Bryan’s work is unquestionably his own, it is crafted with the utmost sincerity and unequivocally wrapped in an indubitable honesty."
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| "Pie In The Sky" |
Unsurprisingly, Bryan's early influences were artists like Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, and R. Crumb. Early events that influenced his thinking were the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Civil Rights Movement, assassinations of Kennedy and MLK, and "the whole hippie/psychedelic/eastern religion phenomenon".
He says of the times he grew up in, "We truly believed the world could and should be changed. It was a strange mix of optimism and horror. Those events have stayed with me all these years and continually surface in my paintings."
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| "The Republic of Amnesia" |
"Political art is propaganda and opinion", says Bryan. "We all push for what we believe in and against what we fear. When the circus turns especially ugly, I feel the need and responsibility to make some kind of comment. Sometimes, it’s just too easy. Many political characters are already walking cartoons and almost paint themselves. So how can one resist?"
That's funny... and true.
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| "Trump-O-Matic" |
It is a strange and twisted world, a surrealist circus, and that makes for some very interesting art. In this regard, Bryan's is among the most intriguing I have seen.
See more of Mark's art here: artofmarkbryan.com
