Mark Stephen Chapman:
Lessons in Art Learned at an Exhibition

Mark Chapman working on In the Beginning

Mark Stephen Chapman defines creativity in terms of the ability to create an original work of art that invents a new, fresh, and independent thought or action.  Thus, the exploring of one’s art from different aspects should teach a lesson of inventing new, fresh and independent thought in order to create interesting artwork. In this show, Mark creates 12 works of art for McGuffey Art Center artists and visitors. Each work is crafted from one or more perspectives mentioned above.

His latest piece entitled “In the Beginning” (the process featured in pictures below) expresses light emitted at the center of the universe when it was create. Call it the Big Bang (on the macroscopic scale) or the Zinc Spark emitted when an egg is fertilized (on the microscopic level).  From physics lessons, we learned that light is equivalent to energy and that energy is equivalent to matter, hence, this stained glass 3-D sculpture the lessons of light, movement (the sculpture rotates), and depth are incorporated. He also uses a fog generator to add to the creative presentation.

Mark enjoys working with stained glass because the color, intensity, and hues of the light both refracted in and reflected from the glass are variable throughout the day.  However, this variation is not observed in the gallery and thus much of the artist’s glass work is presented with back-lighting. Including the kinetic artwork discussed earlier, there are 5 stained-glass works of art in this exhibit (2 lanterns: “Cosmic Tranquility and POW Survival” (a wall hanging), “The Sea Urchins” (and a free-standing metal trellis grapevine sculpture). For these pieces, the viewer provides the movement in order to perceive motion in the artwork. For example, in the Sea Urchin wall hanging, in order to observe the fish swimming, a viewer must walk up to or parallel to the fish; this is a result of Mark incorporating several layers of water glass in the artwork. 

Mark also achieves light, movement and depth in his oil on canvas paintings and stone sculpture.  Observe “The Spinnaker” and feel the wind pulling the boat through the waves. Look at the shadows generated onboard the feluccas sailing on the Nile.  Observe the reflection of light off the heavily varnished water in front of the castle at Ludlow. The lessons demonstrated in these works were first learned by Mark by studying the work of a Dutch master painter named Salomon van Ruysdael (1602-1670 A.D.). I included In the exhibition my reproduction of his work “Farms on a Canal” because it played a profound impact on my artistic expression. Examine it closely to see then 3 aspects of importance to my artwork. We can learn a lot about creativity by applying art lessons from past artist.