MARK ENTWISLE
In ‘Daylight Matters’ a young girl, bordered on either side by lambent green foliage, approaches a dark tunnel. The viewer’s eye is drawn towards this shady centre, a pool of inky green so opaque it’s almost black. Where the darkness gives way to bright light on the other side, the tunnel’s mouth is ringed with what look like rolling, roiling flames of fire, flickers of olive and ochre. If there’s a thread that runs through Mark’s work—both his oil paintings and his watercolours, whether portraits, landscapes or still lives— it’s his astonishing ability to bring light to life on the canvas. The luminous centre of ‘Rowing Boat’ with its impression of the gentle undulations of sun-dappled water, glinting and gleaming between the soft sway of leaves and branches. The tablecloth that dominates ‘Walkie Talkie’, glowing with creamy, crisp whiteness. What is ‘Escaliers Jeunes, Bois Vert’ if not a portrait of light, the reflection of the window brazenly projected across the wall in an otherwise empty stairwell?
Mark is a painter of glimpses, of flashes of light, of intimate, otherwise unwitnessed moments. His unoccupied rooms are suggestive of abandoned stage sets; imbued with the echoes of a scene just finished, or the portent of one about to come. His portraits focus on nothing but the subject in question; narrative is implied, but rarely actually gestured to. His landscapes are still and silent. He also sees compositions where others wouldn’t, in
the detritus of ordinary, everyday life: a receipt, rolls of masking tape, a wineglass repurposed as a makeshift vase, even the postcards pinned up on his studio wall.
But it’s his watercolours that best capture this essence of spontaneity. He bought a tin at a jumble sale when he was only 16, and found he could work with them straight away; the connection between eye and hand was immediate and instinctive. He used them—and uses them still—to sketch anything that caught his eye. “Friends, beautiful things, pop stars, light falling on objects, favourite places.” Over the years, these sketchbooks have become a journal of sorts, a record of his life: “When I look at one of them,” he explains, “it’s easy to recollect where I was, what else was happening, what I was listening to.” It’s a medium to which he’s stayed quietly faithful; that which affords him the most freedom, and allows him to paint what he regards as his most unguarded, unselfconscious work. It makes sense then that there should be such a confidence to these images, and a cleanness too. Mark paints with a precision that’s not commonly associated with watercolours, but most impressive of all is the boldness with which he plays with empty space. What he doesn’t paint—those portions of the paper that he leaves blank—are every bit as important as that which he fills with colour. They’re unfinished, but they’re not incomplete.
Lucy Scholes
Study for Scotch Pines, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Pines, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Birches, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Scotch Pines, Hamstead Heath II, 2022 oil on canvas 90 × 120 cm
Escaliers Jeunes, Bois Vert, 2022 oil on gesso board 25 × 18 cm
Shed, 2022
on gesso board
35 cm
Study for Daylight Matters, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Daylight Matters, 2022 oil on gesso board 120 x 150 cm
& Vermeer, Postcard
on gesso board
Rowing Boat I, 2022 oil on gesso board 29.5 × 42 cm
Rowing Boat II,
Tulips, the Chapel, 2022 watercolour 36 × 25 cm
Wavy Roof, Fitou, 2022 oil on gesso board 21 × 30 cm
Wavy Roof, 2022 oil on gesso board 100 × 122 cm
Coffee Pot,
Walky Talky, 2022 oil on gesso board 14.5 × 21 cm
Pink Sky, Sutton Hoo, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Trees, Sutton Hoo, 2022 oil on gesso board 21 × 30 cm
White Cup, 2022 oil on gesso board 18 × 25 cm
Thorpeness, 2022 oil on gesso board 17 × 30 cm
White House, Hemmingford Grey, 2022 oil on gesso board 29.5 × 37 cm
Rowing Boat II, 2022 oil on canvas 80 × 100 cm
Biography
Born in 1961
Brighton Art College, 1981-84
Cambridge College of Arts & Technology, 1980 - 81
Solo Exhibitions
Light Matters, Long & Ryle, 2022
Postcard Masterpieces, Long & Ryle, Online Exhibition, 2021
The Things We Forget, Long & Ryle, London, 2016
Off White, Long & Ryle, London, 2010 Islands in a Stream, Long & Ryle, London, 2008 Out of the Woods, Long & Ryle, London, 2007 Wildlife, Long & Ryle, London, 2005 Long & Ryle, London, 2004 Long & Ryle, London, 2002 Long & Ryle, London, 2000 Beaux Arts, Bath, 1998 Beaux Arts, Bath, 1992 Beaux Arts, Bath, 1990
Selected Group Exhibitions
Summer Exhibition of Watercolours, Long & Ryle, 2022
The British Art Fair, Saatchi Gallery, 2022
A Valentine Show, Long & Ryle, 2022 Revelation, Long & Ryle, 2022
The London Original Print Fair, Somerset House, 2022
Small is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, 2021
RA Summer Show, 2021
The London Art Fair, 2021 ArtLONDON 2021
Small is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, 2020 Small is Beautiful, Flowers Gallery, 2019 Art Hamptons, New York, 2011
The British Art Fair, 2011
The British Art Fair, 2010 Mixed Exhibition, Long & Ryle, London, 2009
The British Art Fair, 2009
The British Art Fair, 2008
RA Summer Show, 2006
The British Art Fair, 2006
The British Art Fair, 2005
RA Summer Show, 2005
The British Art Fair, 2004
RA Summer Show, 2004
The British Art Fair, 2003
RA Summer Show, 2003
The British Art Fair, 2002
RA Summer Show, 2002
RA Summer Show, 2001
Long & Ryle, London, 2000
Beaux Arts, Bath, 1991
Alma Gallery, Bristol, 1991 Images Gallery, Amsterdam, 1991
Awards
Current holder of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
Sea Bright Award, Royal Society of Watercolours, 2021
Discerning Eye, The Parker Harris Mentoring Prize, 2020
Wells Art Contemporary, 2018 Lynne Stainers and Painters Art prize, 2013, 2017
Hunting Art Prize, 2000
Threadneedle Art Prize, 2010
BP Portrait Award Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, 2000 & 2001 (commended 2002)
Laing Art Prize, 1999
Discerning Eye, 1999 1999 2001 2014 2016 2017 + Founder’s prize 2014
Hunting Art Prize, Regional Prize Winner, 1998
Shortlisted for NatWest Art Prize, 1997
Commissions
Penguin Books
Time Magazine
Der Spiegel
Sunday Times Observer
London Evening Standard
London Underground
