MARK C. STEVENSON
ABOUT
Practice
The investigation begins with a basic question: How are subject, narrative and meaning derived and where do they reside? Across five bodies of work, the images establish conditions that encourage recognition, then gradually unsettle the certainty that recognition depends on. What first appears stable becomes less secure over time.
In each series, familiar visual structures, architectural space, the figure, landscape, photographic realism, function as entry points. They allow viewers to orient quickly and assume they know what they are seeing. Once that orientation takes hold, the work begins to contradict initial assumptions. The cues that normally stabilize interpretation become less reliable, and the act of looking becomes more self-conscious.
The current series, Call Me Ishmael, is the most sustained and structurally developed investigation of these concerns. Across thirteen paintings, tree canopy imagery establishes a recognizable subject, then progressively unsettles it. Early works install the expectation; later works provide less visual support for it, yet viewers often continue searching for confirmation of what they believe is there.
The aim is not to withhold meaning, but to draw attention to the process by which meaning takes shape. As recognition becomes less certain, the work shifts attention from what is seen to the assumptions and habits of perception that organize seeing in the first place.
Bio
Across multiple bodies of work, Mark Stevenson constructs visual systems that use familiar subjects and structures to draw viewers into acts of recognition that become less certain over time. Working across painting, photography, and installation-based thinking, his practice examines the assumptions viewers bring to images and the role those assumptions play in shaping interpretation.
His current series, Call Me Ishmael, takes this investigation furthest. Across a sequence of large-scale paintings, tree canopy imagery establishes a plausible subject, then gradually unsettles the conditions that made that subject seem secure. As viewers move through the series, attention shifts from what is seen to how seeing organizes meaning.
Earlier projects approach related questions through different visual languages. High Windows compresses urban space into flattened facades and blocked points of entry. Categorically Wrong places photography and abstraction into productive conflict by transforming torn, painted canvas fragments into photographic images that read as autonomous abstract objects. In Circle of Fifths, color, sequence, and adjacency generate shifting visual relationships that echo the structural logic of musical arrangement.
Stevenson’s work has been exhibited at the Heckscher Museum of Art, G.W. Einstein Gallery, White Columns, and Vis-à-Vis Gallery. His professional practice also includes documentary filmmaking, photography, and visual storytelling, with multiple Emmy, Clio, Webby, and New York Press Club awards. He lives and works in New York.
917-617-2221
Selected Exhibitions
1998 Solo Exhibition, Vis-à-Vis Gallery, New York, NY
1997 Benefit Exhibition, White Columns, New York, NY
1996 Group Exhibition, G.W. Einstein Gallery, New York, NY
1994 Juried Exhibition, Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY
Public Commissions
Relief Sculpture, Bridge to Peace Award, Tel Aviv University
Commissioned work presented annually for more than fifteen years
Selected Series
2024–2026 Call Me Ishmael, oil and graphite on canvas and repurposed doors
2020–2022 Categorically Wrong, ink on paper using photographic methods
2019–2020 Excuse Me, photography
2017–2018 Circle of Fifths, oil paintings
2015 -2017 High Windows, oil paintings
2011–2012 Bungalow Portraits, oil paintings
2007–2008 Rank Amateurs, photographic montage series
2006–2007 Bungalow Portraits, photographic montage series
1997–1998 Iconography, mixed-media sculptures with miniature paintings
1995–1999 Restaurant Row, oil paintings
1993–1994 Reconstruction, mixed media
1990–1993 His Shoes, oil paintings
Awards and Distinctions
Four-time Emmy Award recipient
Two-time New York Press Club Award recipient
Three-time Clio Award recipient for documentary awareness campaigns produced for NAMI
Photography and editorial work published in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and Entertainment Weekly
Education
Studies in Painting, Art Students League of New York
Independent Study in Painting
Other Projects
2014 All Our Sons, documentary film. Produced, shot, and directed
2001–2010 Illustration and animation for Broadway promotional campaigns. Webby Award recipient
2000–2001 Co-founder, Liberal Arts Productions. Produced Bad Blood, Playwrights Horizons and The Lark Theatre, New York