visual arts & contemporary crafts
Artgenu/e by Lesley Samms
What’s the Story? Artists talking about their unique journey Mark Austin is a Pure artist and regularly exhibits his artwork with Pure at Pure Beauport House Gallery at Bannatyne Hotel and Spa Hastings. Mark has recently been a Pure Artist in Residence at Bannatyne. The Pure residency commissioning programme offers artists, at any stage in their professional career journey, space and time to focus on developing both their emotional and business skills and art, to ensure they establish a strong and resilient professional art practice that will sustain them going forward. “The Pure residency has encouraged me to embed some discipline into my art life – this discipline calms me down and it helps me see. From my practice perspective the regular drawing is having a positive impact, my understanding of which is still emerging and becoming clearer daily.”
What is your earliest memory associated with art? Helping set up local art exhibitions and shows. Both my grandpa and grandma were members of the Sussex Guild and regularly used to hold exhibitions in the local area. I remember stewarding at the local flower show exhibition when I must have been around eight years old.
Please can you tell us about your background and upbringing?
Please could you tell us who or what has had the most significant influence on you as an artist.
Born and raised in the High Weald in Hailsham, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' farm near Heathfield. Mum and Dad were active members of the local church and we were encouraged to be creative and mix with people. I have always had a passion for the outdoors and wanted to be a farmer but this changed when I did volunteer work with my dad at the Bluebell Railway, spending one month in the civil engineering department. This experience got me my first job as a construction technician and led to me leaving home at sixteen and a thirty year career in the construction sector. I worked up from the shop floor and was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to do lots of different roles eventually becoming Innovation Director of one of the UK’s largest construction companies.
My grandma and grandpa, and my mum for her passion for photography. Latterly my inspiration is with Gaudi, Kandinsky and Picasso, as well as David Nash for his wood sculpture.
Did you make art as a child? I was actively encouraged to be creative as a child and was always making things / playing with Lego etc. My grandpa was a model maker and my grandma was a watercolour artist. My grandma used to let me use the art studio when ever I stayed, which had a view up the valley from the family farm. My grandpa was always in the workshop, and I spent many hours in there with him learning different skills. We had a dark room at home in the loft and I used to develop my own black and white photographs with my 28
mum, who still to this day has a better eye than me for a competition winning photograph.
What is your artist muse? Your inspiration. The unique patterns and moments in nature which I capture in sculpture, art and photography. I love walking and sketching in the Sussex landscape. What motivates you? Nature and the world around me. The desire to make a positive difference and share my artistic journey and story. Please can you talk to us in detail about one piece of artwork. The piece of artwork is Bridge in the Woods. I have walked that route for over forty years and playing Pooh Sticks on the bridge is somewhat of a family tradition going through the generations. Whenever we go to my parents we walk past and splash in the river. There was, for about twenty years, a tree root which slowly moved down the river in storms until last year when it finally got stuck under the bridge and it was moved.
ingénu/e magazine – south downs and high weald : issue 36