Artist Mark Webber noted for use of color
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“Subject matter is not the most important element to me,” artist Mark Webber said, dismissing the dog, the table, the bath tub, the mirror and maybe even the figures of the man and woman who show up in many of his paintings.
“The important thing is the color, the composition,” he said as art lovers milled about the Sandra Dyczewski Maffei Gallery at the Wyoming Valley Art League’s Circle Centre for the Arts in downtown Wilkes-Barre.
The occasion was the opening reception for an exhibit of Webber’s paintings, titled “Interior Process,” which will remain on display through Dec. 6.
“I appreciate what he’s doing,” fellow artist Robert Bergstrasser said during the reception. Pointing to an oil-and-chalk rendering titled “Dog and Couple,” he said, “They’re two opposite parts of the color wheel. The man is green; the woman is red and blue; how can two people in a painting be further apart?”
“They evoke frescos,” fellow artist and gallery director Allison Maslow said of Webber’s work, noting “the push and pull of the colors.”
Webber has exhibited his work in New York City and in Paris — and at Marywood University, where he is on the faculty.
When his work was on display at Marywood Mahady Gallery in early 2010 Charles Gregory Woods, a writer for one of the Times Leader’s sister publications, The Weekender, also seemed taken by Webber’s use of color.
“His colors, I think, are beautiful and glow as if with a deep fire —like burnt ashes. He loves lovely tints of rose and royal blues and golden-oranges and flat whites and medium grays and muted browns, and that’s it. He uses a very limited palette and uses it with love over and over again, creating a tight body of work.”
“… He strongly dislikes narrative stories in art in general,” the review continued. “A man and a woman, together or alone, sometimes with a dog. Sitting and reading or dressing, bathing. All very simple setups for his art … The works seem timeless somehow, too. Mark does not work from models or photos but invents the scenes or sometimes uses classical works or Greek vase paintings for rough models …”
“One thing is missing from today, though: clutter and electronics,” Woods wrote. “The furniture is simple and traditional, the tables and walls are bare — no stacks of things, no paintings even. It’s as if the artist is saying to us, ‘This alone is enough to be human — a friend, a bath, a book a pet dog.’ He’s right, of course.”
Don’t worry if you missed the opening reception in October. The Circle Centre for the Arts announced on its Facebook page that a second reception will be held 5 to 8 p.m. Nov. 15. Regular hours at the Circle Centre are noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and by appointment Saturdays and Sundays.