Timeline

Mark Gould is perhaps best known for his gorgeous continuing series, “My Neighbor’s House,” a dazzling exploration of the American dream. His restless brush has also created still lifes, figure studies, and landscapes, and he recently embarked on a series of western landscapes.

Mark says each genre, each piece, offers him the chance to experiment with the five formal elements of painting: line, form, mass, texture, and color. However, signature qualities shine through in all his work: a fearless, virtuosic use of color, an expansive feeling of space and freedom, and bravura surfaces ranging from a mirror gloss to roughly built-up to rhythmically incised (to lend texture to his grass and hay).

Born and raised in the rural heartland of America, Gould recalls drawing incessantly, but without access to art classes, until he attended college. On the verge of failing his initial semester he took his first art/design class, at the end of which both he and his instructor knew art should be his major.

After graduating from the University of Iowa, Gould worked in residential construction, became a general contractor and eventually fabricated tradeshow exhibitions. As assistant manager of the traveling exhibition program at a major museum he acquired a lasting appreciation for the sacredness of the objects people made

This appreciation inspired Gould in his own art-making and in his continued studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Denver Art Students League, and the University of New Mexico. Within three years of beginning to show his work publicly, in 1986, he gained representation by major galleries.

The last few years have been marked by extraordinary growth and fruitfulness for Gould. It’s been years of daredevil experimentation, dramatic maturation, and growing recognition, as well as satisfaction in finding that his work has struck a chord in collectors and art lovers around the world.