2018 TAÍNO statement
These new paintings continue my pursuit of economy. An economy of scale, of means, a lean approach to the process of painting.
My travel to Cuba only reinforced this pursuit. The limited means (poverty) that the country lives under is humbling.
Cuba has provided me with an answer to the argument that art is a luxury, that creating, collecting and appreciation only comes after all the necessities have been satiated. The creative drive of Cuban artists demonstrate that the creation and appreciation of art is as necessary as food and shelter.
There are so many good jokes about art. One that I have always taken to heart states: “If you can’t make it good, then by all means make it big”.
Scale to an abstract painter is an especially important formal consideration. Mark Rothko’s works on paper and the small, almost postcard size paintings of Willem DeKooning, I hold in high esteem.
Consider these paintings short stories, a nod to Ernest Hemingway. They are not studies for larger paintings. They are complete, intimate and stand on their own. Working within this shorter format if you will, is a personal challenge for me. Over the years I have made smaller works, mainly on paper but this is my first complete body of work devoted to intimacy with the viewer.
What I appreciate is that while you stand in front of these small works you are not sharing them with anyone.
You surround the painting. You get this story all to yourself, at least for a little while.
2016 Statement
The strengths I have as an abstract painter come from my education at the Kansas City Art Institute. During my tenure at KCAI, the painting program’s emphasis was on the figurative discipline. The department chairman’s ethos was “paint from nature.”
There were two abstract painting studios in the department, but these professors also taught figure drawing. There were heavy doses of, you just don’t make this stuff up & good work always comes from direct observation, dispensed to all the painting students.
This new work was produced after my first trip to Italy during the summer or 2015. My titles reference this trip, a show of John Singer Sargent viewed while returning from Italy and Jazz standards from the 1950’s and 60‘s.
I continue to reevaluate my working process and the formal criteria I rely on. The picture plane is becoming more fluid. There is a greater emphasis towards a reductive attitude in each completed painting and drawing. The works on paper start out covering the floor of my studio. I then use large Chinese brushes to apply strokes of watercolor. These gestures are the back bone of each drawing. The paintings start out the same way, on the floor with oil washes applied over the entire surface.
How time is spent in the studio follows the reductive goals of this new work. I don’t clutter my time with reading or music while painting.
In the past, painting would not start until I had picked out the music for the day. The sounds now are my breathing, the mixing of paint, brushes against canvas and from the neighborhood outside my studio. On occasion I will pop in a jazz cd as a reward for progress in the studio.
In the last few years I have developed quite an affinity for the work of Arshile Gorky. While a student, I passed over his delicate brush strokes
and washes of color preferring the thick smears and splashes of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.
Now that I am ready to see what he was up to, I am intrigued by how feminine his work is when compared to the swagger of his contemporaries.
For the past four years I have placed greater importance on a delicate line and the quiet application of paint.
2016 That Was Then | This Is Now press release
Goodwin Fine Art is pleased to present the paintings of abstract painters, Andy Berg and Mark Villarreal. That was Then | This is Now refers to the artists’ undergraduate days spent in the late seventies, early eighties at the venerated Kansas City Art Institute. As with many art schools of the time and even now, curriculums were firmly rooted in teaching the technical skills of drawing and painting from life and or nature, harkening back to the early academies of art. The exhibit installation will start off by highlighting a single drawing and/or painting
from the artist’s academic training at KCAI.
Mark Villarreal’s new body of work is largely inspired by a recent trip to Italy. It was out of this immersive framework of looking at works
of art by Italian Renaissance masters that Villarreal’s unique and individual vocabulary of abstraction has been taken to another level.
The compositions retain their unifying lyricism of line, while subsets of interrupted shapes hang in the balance. Shapes collide and are suspended within the picture plane, nearly submerged by overlays of color or visually obstructed by opaque color blocks that recede and come forward with a kinesthetic reflex. The paintings possess a more integrative quality with less obvious duality that was prevalent when Villarreal was working more consistently within a diptych format. This prodigious output of work by Villarreal after the summer trip to Italy and taking a look back at his student days at KCAI is the summation for the artist of the, That was Then | This is Now and further conveyed through the written statement for the exhibition.
“In the last few years I have developed quite an affinity for the work of Arshile Gorky. While a student, I passed over his delicate brush strokes and washes of color preferring the thick smears and splashes of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Now that I am ready to see what he was up to, I am intrigued by how feminine his work is when compared to the swagger of his contemporaries.” - Mark Villarreal, March 2016
WESTWORD review by Michael Paglia, May 2016
Shows in town right now include work by artists who haven’t exhibited here in some time — and they’re a welcome sight. That Was Then, This Is Now, conjoined solos at Goodwin Fine Art, pairs paintings by Mark Villarreal and Andy Berg; though both have lived in Colorado for decades —Villarreal in Boulder, Berg in Golden — it’s been several years since either has been the subject of a Denver show. The exhibit’s title refers to the fact that Villarreal and Berg went to the prestigious Kansas City Art Institute back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and the exhibit begins with a single example of work done by each artist during his student days.
Villarreal first came to local prominence in the late 1980s with heavily worked, neo-abstract expressionist paintings that were richly colored and had lots of pigment piled up by the brushwork. The ’80s were dominated by neo-expressionism, an exuberant representational style, as well as conceptualism, which made Villarreal’s approach seem somewhat unusual — or even out of step — at the time. In a sense, he was behind the aesthetic curve then — but as revealed by the stylistic development in contemporary painting over the intervening years, he was also ahead of it.
These recent paintings are both signature Villarreals and distinctly new. Villarreal is interested in the history of art, and in his written statement, he explains that the arc of his painterly development has been from the macho, two-fisted mark-making of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to the delicate, even feminine moves of Arshile Gorky. The rounded shapes that resemble loops or droplets dominating his recent compositions are Gorkyesque; so is the relative flatness of the coats of paint, compared with the heavy impasto he preferred in his early work.
A number of the paintings have an unusual tall, narrow shape typically associated with full-length portraits; it turns out that this aspect of the work was inspired by John Singer Sargent. Though Villarreal’s compositions are totally non-objective, the vertical shape of the canvases covertly suggests the human figure. “Venetian Painting, no. 3” is spectacular, predominantly a sunny yellow with freely drawn oval shapes outlined in black rising on the left side but offset at the top center by a turquoise one; the compositional elements are freely done and their casual placement guided by the artist’s aesthetic instinct. These paintings sport limited palettes of just a few shades, so “Venetian Painting, no. 5” is nearly all red and pink, while “San Polo Painting, no. 4” is blue and black. All of the titles have Italian references; this body of work was done after Villarreal returned from a recent trip to Italy.
http://www.westword.com/arts/review-remarkable-and-that-was-then-this-is-now-are-sights-to-see-7867620
2013 Goodwin Fine Art press release
Mark Villarreal continues to explore non-objective abstraction and what the artist refers to as his “dictionary of symbols and mark-making.” Villarreal has been painting and exhibiting his work for close to three decades and as a result has built up a treasure trove of shapes, along with an ever-evolving sophisticated palette. The artist often works on two canvas panels abutted to one another creating a centerline down the middle of the composition. A tension and dialogue between shapes occurs activating the canvas in a unique way. Villarreal’s mark-making is intentional and vigorous, in the single panel paintings where the centerline is absent blocks of color segment the compositions. The use of lyrical line can be consistently traced throughout the paintings, at times creating negative space or defining the interior of the organic shapes, juggling between transparency and opacity. The paintings evoke joy and playfulness in part due to the palette along with the colliding shapes acting as flotsam across the picture plane.
Mark Villarreal continues to explore non-objective abstraction and what the artist refers to as his “dictionary of symbols and mark-making.” Villarreal has been painting and exhibiting his work for close to three decades and as a result has built up a treasure trove of shapes, along with an ever-evolving sophisticated palette. The artist often works on two canvas panels abutted to one another creating a centerline down the middle of the composition. A tension and dialogue between shapes occurs activating the canvas in a unique way. Villarreal’s mark-making is intentional and vigorous, in the single panel paintings where the centerline is absent blocks of color segment the compositions. The use of lyrical line can be consistently traced throughout the paintings, at times creating negative space or defining the interior of the organic shapes, juggling between transparency and opacity. The paintings evoke joy and playfulness in part due to the palette along with the colliding shapes acting as flotsam across the picture plane.
"After 33 years of abstract painting, I have acquired a library of images, compositions, and a palette that is relied upon in the creation of new work. These paintings share their predecessors' origins.
The current show gives me the opportunity to display a re-evaluation of my formal criteria concerning finished artwork, challenging my comfort level and demanding from my eye an earlier commitment to compositions and color. The quality of line, bold palette, primal compositions and raw initial mark making is my final goal.
The titles of Camunda, and Kala refer to aspects of the Hindu Goddess Kali."
"...With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind that is not natural in an age like this, ..."
~W.B. Yeats
The current show gives me the opportunity to display a re-evaluation of my formal criteria concerning finished artwork, challenging my comfort level and demanding from my eye an earlier commitment to compositions and color. The quality of line, bold palette, primal compositions and raw initial mark making is my final goal.
The titles of Camunda, and Kala refer to aspects of the Hindu Goddess Kali."
"...With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind that is not natural in an age like this, ..."
~W.B. Yeats
Westword Review by Michael Paglia 12/12/13
About a dozen blocks from Gildar, in the elegant Goodwin Fine Art, director Tina Goodwin has installed a pair of solos. Starting in the back, in the west gallery, there's Mark Villarreal: Recent Work. Villarreal, who is based in Boulder, first exhibited in Denver back in the late 1980s, but over the years he's kept a pretty low profile, only rarely showing in town since then. Now, as evidenced by this exhibit, he's back at full strength. I hope this show at Goodwin represents a comeback for him, because he's clearly one of the top abstract painters around.
In his artist statement, Villarreal writes that the forms, compositions and palettes he employed for this latest body of work were the result of his having distilled the experience of painting abstracts over the past 33 years. Taking what he's learned from these previous efforts, he re-evaluated his approach in order to arrive at this latest work. In it, he divides the canvas into roughly rectilinear panels of color to provide grounds for his automatist compositions. Then he goes in and inserts forms and lines, often using ovoid shapes arranged instinctively, placing these elements on top of the multiple grounds. Both the grounds and the forms are filled in with painterly flourishes, and brushmarks and even misses are visible on the surface. Villarreal has a taste for strong, toned-up colors used in complex but relentlessly successful combinations, and the results are striking. The paintings, supplemented by a trio of mixed-media collages, positively glow under the track lights when the entire show is taken in with one look.Villarreal's paintings have a lot of charisma, making them seem larger than they are. So the big ones look really huge — in particular, the breathtaking "Essex I," a billboard of a painting covered in rough rectangles and wavy ovals and accented by a lot of frenetic scribbling. It's a knockout. I've liked everything I've ever seen by Villarreal, and the work in this show does nothing to change that.
http://www.showandtelldenver.com
About a dozen blocks from Gildar, in the elegant Goodwin Fine Art, director Tina Goodwin has installed a pair of solos. Starting in the back, in the west gallery, there's Mark Villarreal: Recent Work. Villarreal, who is based in Boulder, first exhibited in Denver back in the late 1980s, but over the years he's kept a pretty low profile, only rarely showing in town since then. Now, as evidenced by this exhibit, he's back at full strength. I hope this show at Goodwin represents a comeback for him, because he's clearly one of the top abstract painters around.
In his artist statement, Villarreal writes that the forms, compositions and palettes he employed for this latest body of work were the result of his having distilled the experience of painting abstracts over the past 33 years. Taking what he's learned from these previous efforts, he re-evaluated his approach in order to arrive at this latest work. In it, he divides the canvas into roughly rectilinear panels of color to provide grounds for his automatist compositions. Then he goes in and inserts forms and lines, often using ovoid shapes arranged instinctively, placing these elements on top of the multiple grounds. Both the grounds and the forms are filled in with painterly flourishes, and brushmarks and even misses are visible on the surface. Villarreal has a taste for strong, toned-up colors used in complex but relentlessly successful combinations, and the results are striking. The paintings, supplemented by a trio of mixed-media collages, positively glow under the track lights when the entire show is taken in with one look.Villarreal's paintings have a lot of charisma, making them seem larger than they are. So the big ones look really huge — in particular, the breathtaking "Essex I," a billboard of a painting covered in rough rectangles and wavy ovals and accented by a lot of frenetic scribbling. It's a knockout. I've liked everything I've ever seen by Villarreal, and the work in this show does nothing to change that.
http://www.showandtelldenver.com
J. MARK VILLARREAL
EDUCATION
BFA, Concentration in Painting, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2019 Colorado Impact Fund, Solo show
2019 Colorado Abstract + 10, Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities, Arvada, CO
2019 Spark Gallery 40th Anniversary Exhibition
2019 ART OF THE STATE, Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities, Arvada, CO
2018 COALESCE, Group Exhibition, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2018 TAÍNO, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO.
2016 That Was Then, This Is Now, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2015 Globe Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2014 Unicom Gallery
2014 Open Press: 25 Years of Printmaking, Denver, CO
2013 New Work, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2013 McNichols Building Inauguration - group show, Denver, CO
2012 Gallery Artists, Summer Group Show, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2008 Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, Couples Show, Boulder, CO
Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen, CO
2004 University of Miami, Exhibition of monotypes printed at Anderson Ranch, Miami, FL
1998 Robischon Gallery, Summer Abstraction Show, Denver, CO
1994 Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO
1993 University of Colorado Galleries, Flow, Boulder, CO
1992 Robischon Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Denver, CO
1991 Byzantine Installation, Emmanuel Gallery, Auraria Campus, Denver, CO
1990 Colorado 1990, curated by Dianne Vanderlip, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Allene Lapides Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Santa Fe, NM
1989 Robischon Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Denver, CO
1988 Sangre de Christo Art Center, Pueblo, CO
VISITING ARTIST | GUEST LECTURER | COMMITTEES SERVED
2021 - 2019
Board member - Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO.
2021 - 2016
Boulder Arts Commission - Chair of the Boulder Arts Commission, 2018-2020
2004 - 1991
Guest lecturer, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
Visiting Artist, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Assistant to Master Printer, Bud Shark, Sharks Inc., Lyons, CO
Visiting Artist, Patton Print Shop, Anderson Ranch, Aspen CO
1997 Colorado Council on the Arts, Committee member, grant selection panel for Visual Arts, Theater and Choral Music.
1997- Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Exhibitions committee, Boulder, CO
PUBLIC ART PROJECTS
1994 Boulder Farmers Market, City of Boulder, CO
A collaborative project with City of Boulder, members of the Farmers Market and local elementary school students to design, fabricate and install images of tea cups, tea pots and tea names into 13th Street proper, home to the Dushanbe Tea House, the Boulder Farmers Market
and Art fairs.
1994 Lowry Laboratory, Public Art commission finalist
1994 - 1996 Norwood Neighborhood, Boulder, CO, Site Plan Project
Grant received from the Boulder Arts Council, and the Colorado Council on the Arts. Member of the artist design team for the neighborhood site plan development.
1990 - 1994 Denver International Airport, City of Denver, Colorado
Co-managed a 1.5 million dollar public art commission, United Airlines concourse (B), included the design and fabrication for 50,000 sq. ft. of floor area using terrazzo, stone, cast bronze and polished concrete. Management of this project included budgets, fabrication, cultural / historical fact checking and public relations.
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Greenberg Trauig Law, Denver, CO
General Services Administration (GSA), Denver, CO
Harvey Hine Architects, Boulder, CO
Unicom Capital LLC, Denver, CO
One Boulder Plaza, Boulder, CO
EDUCATION
BFA, Concentration in Painting, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2019 Colorado Impact Fund, Solo show
2019 Colorado Abstract + 10, Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities, Arvada, CO
2019 Spark Gallery 40th Anniversary Exhibition
2019 ART OF THE STATE, Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities, Arvada, CO
2018 COALESCE, Group Exhibition, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2018 TAÍNO, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO.
2016 That Was Then, This Is Now, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2015 Globe Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM
2014 Unicom Gallery
2014 Open Press: 25 Years of Printmaking, Denver, CO
2013 New Work, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2013 McNichols Building Inauguration - group show, Denver, CO
2012 Gallery Artists, Summer Group Show, Goodwin Fine Art, Denver, CO
2008 Dairy Center for the Arts, Boulder, Couples Show, Boulder, CO
Harvey Meadows Gallery, Aspen, CO
2004 University of Miami, Exhibition of monotypes printed at Anderson Ranch, Miami, FL
1998 Robischon Gallery, Summer Abstraction Show, Denver, CO
1994 Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO
1993 University of Colorado Galleries, Flow, Boulder, CO
1992 Robischon Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Denver, CO
1991 Byzantine Installation, Emmanuel Gallery, Auraria Campus, Denver, CO
1990 Colorado 1990, curated by Dianne Vanderlip, Curator, Modern and Contemporary Art, Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Allene Lapides Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Santa Fe, NM
1989 Robischon Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Denver, CO
1988 Sangre de Christo Art Center, Pueblo, CO
VISITING ARTIST | GUEST LECTURER | COMMITTEES SERVED
2021 - 2019
Board member - Dairy Arts Center, Boulder, CO.
2021 - 2016
Boulder Arts Commission - Chair of the Boulder Arts Commission, 2018-2020
2004 - 1991
Guest lecturer, Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO
Visiting Artist, University of Denver, Denver, CO
Assistant to Master Printer, Bud Shark, Sharks Inc., Lyons, CO
Visiting Artist, Patton Print Shop, Anderson Ranch, Aspen CO
1997 Colorado Council on the Arts, Committee member, grant selection panel for Visual Arts, Theater and Choral Music.
1997- Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Exhibitions committee, Boulder, CO
PUBLIC ART PROJECTS
1994 Boulder Farmers Market, City of Boulder, CO
A collaborative project with City of Boulder, members of the Farmers Market and local elementary school students to design, fabricate and install images of tea cups, tea pots and tea names into 13th Street proper, home to the Dushanbe Tea House, the Boulder Farmers Market
and Art fairs.
1994 Lowry Laboratory, Public Art commission finalist
1994 - 1996 Norwood Neighborhood, Boulder, CO, Site Plan Project
Grant received from the Boulder Arts Council, and the Colorado Council on the Arts. Member of the artist design team for the neighborhood site plan development.
1990 - 1994 Denver International Airport, City of Denver, Colorado
Co-managed a 1.5 million dollar public art commission, United Airlines concourse (B), included the design and fabrication for 50,000 sq. ft. of floor area using terrazzo, stone, cast bronze and polished concrete. Management of this project included budgets, fabrication, cultural / historical fact checking and public relations.
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Greenberg Trauig Law, Denver, CO
General Services Administration (GSA), Denver, CO
Harvey Hine Architects, Boulder, CO
Unicom Capital LLC, Denver, CO
One Boulder Plaza, Boulder, CO