_________________________________________________________________________________________Mark Demsteader, Shallow Waters, oil on canvas, 43ins x 43ins
The thick layers of Mark Demsteader’s paintings are rough but delicate, and in spite of the unfinished detailing, his images are realistic. His paintings are sensual and melancholic, dark but full of enjoyment for their pure colour, and reminiscent of the Pre-Raphaelites. Unfortunately his path was obscured in the 1990s by the domination of the Young British Artists, when figurative art works were out of favour. Still he is one of the best British figurative painters and his work shows that traditional means are alive and have a lot to say. It’s a comfortable feeling to watch his paintings, stripped of any requirement for overloaded cerebral analysis. Demsteader’s interpretation of reality is pure sensuality, they perhaps remind us of a more primordial and sincere idea of art, like long forgotten paintings in a cave.
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Additional Information
See more work by Mark Demsteader: demsteader.com
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Blog entry by Andrea Ongaro in Berlin; Saturday, Apr. 13, 2013
This article is part of our BLINK series, which introduces the practices of artists around the world. To read more BLINK articles, click here.