Mark Griffin discusses the figurative aspects within his art and their relation to a yogic understanding of the human form. Additionally, he goes on to comment on his Red Queen series, as well as 12 Mothers and Throb of Creation…

“These past years I have been involved in two streams of work: Large scale photography and lost wax bronze sculpture. The connecting idea is that these forms and images are essentially figurative – an explanation and expression of the matrix between the physical and unseen energetic components of the human form.

My interest is the study of the Human Form. My art seeks to express the nature of the unseen True Self. Both the individual and Universal identity.

These pieces (Red Queen) are created using both infrared and color film, taking advantage of the effects of light and motion with both kinds of film. Exploiting effects in the printing process, images are created. Then the images are digitized and brought into Photoshop where again they are manipulated digitally. Once the final image is realized, it is printed on a UV Inkjet 8500 using archival ink and paper and then coated with a preservative resin.

These ideas are designed to exploit the photographic medium. In the sense that a photograph is a picture of something real. Yet, the imagery is involved with the invisible, the unseen nature. The Creative, Beautiful, and Terrible.

Awakening Energy, Form, and Speech.

12 Mothers

These pieces are constructed under the terms of mixed media, photo collage. They are created both through the manipulation of the negative in the darkroom and through a painterly use of the photo chemicals. A further level involves the addition of mixed media—drawn elements and washes of oil paint.

The intention of this series is to express the idea of the feminine, the Mother, the Source. This expression is produced by generating and manipulating images from a series of female models. And so we find the photo collages composed of images of heads, hands, torsos, legs, arms, and hands holding weapons and other objects. These multiple images of the personal femine can be assembled to express the Universal, and the Universal Feminine is rich enough to include wrathful aspects, as exemplified by the hands holding weapons.

These images are intended as projected ideas of the Mind. The presence of the grid in the composition speaks of Reason, and the tension between the imagery and grid’s elements of restraint and containment expresses the relationship between the Inconceivable and the restraining capacity of the Mind.

It is the hope that these pieces can carry the auric expression of the Inexpressible, that they exist as Awakened Ideas.

Throbs of Creation

Lost wax bronze. Fantastic figures expressing the deep interconnection between form and consciousness.

Paintings

The paintings take their inspiration from experiences and feelings in life, both internally in the world of mind and imagination, as well as externally in the concrete world of appearances, with both often colliding or dovetailing, as the case may be, on the same surface. Consequently, these works change from painting to painting. Very often when I put some of them side by side, it is difficult to tell they were done by the same person. These pieces are the result of the process of painting and the process of living intertwined; the visual expression of perceiver and perceived appearing within the picture plane.

All figurative painting is about psycho-physical, emotional, Spiritual, energetic, stages and States of Being. These paintings are explorations of the Human Form.”

–Mark Griffin