Art & Culture
ARTIST AT WORK
No.43 Mark Pender, Snakes and Ladders, 80 x 50 cm, Oil on Canvas, £350
I
sometimes wonder where my work fits in the whole broad spectrum of two-dimensional art. I particularly struggle when, for example, I have to categorise it, faced with that dreadful drop-down thing demanding ‘genre’ or ‘description’. Well, it certainly isn’t abstract. It isn’t still life or landscape (mostly). What does ‘figurative’ mean (no-one seems to agree)? There’s rarely a box for ‘rather eccentric big oil painting’! It amuses me if I can tick ‘Fine Art’. My work commonly tells a story but it isn’t illustration in the usual sense, although I have done the odd book piece. I rather dislike ‘fantasy’ as a description. Dark humour creeps into my paintings and, yes I 6 | Sherborne Times | June 2022
know, occasionally they take on a rather cartoonish edge (strangely, more so after I spent lockdown studying the techniques of Rubens, Da Vinci, Vermeer…). I paint to please myself more than others - I sometimes refer to my ‘stupid art’ but if you’re gonna paint stupid you’d better take it seriously. Anyway, here is Snakes and Ladders which acquired layers of complexity as I painted. It draws on the journey of life, good and evil, luck, fortune and, for good measure, has a bit of religion thrown in as well. Plus Daisy the cow. @markpender.art
