One only needs to divide a blank piece of paper with a line of the horizon and the imagination starts working. Soon there are fields and clouds, there ís a solitary tree, the changing light of the day and the seasons with their colors. Wendy Mark's monotypes remind us of those moments when we make our world larger by dreaming.
Dusky images. Magnificent silent evenings. Overcast landscapes of the soul. The still moment of the eye grafted to the heart. Every time shadow and light come together, it's a different world we are looking at. Here are blurred images out of old dreams and skies of half-forgotten memories. If lyric poetry is the art of making an image of what we feel and cannot say, then Mark is your artist.
The water stains on my ceiling are old maps by early explorers whose rivers and deserts I navigate in my revery. So it is with Mark's monotypes. As someone said, one must lie down behind the blade of grass to see how large the sky really is. In an age in which large format is often mistaken for ambition and greatness, it is refreshing to find a true miniaturíst working.
I thought it only appropriate that Wendy Mark would bring a piece of heavy machinery to an art that requires the most delicate of touches. Nature, too, in its own way, is a steamroller. The same force that pounds us down into dust and sand is capable of finest nuances. Once, after the hurricane was over and the trees and power lines lay everywhere, I saw a lone white butterfly cross the meadows against the pale gray sky.
Charles Simic