Mark Lewis Horst

Early on, I learned about clay and making pottery. I loved the feeling of clay between my fingers as I worked on the potter's wheel, pulling form from a lump of earth. At college I managed the pottery studio for three years, while studying printmaking and drawing.After 22 years of professional life, I have felt the old love reinstating itself. The clay has some kind of grip on my heart. As a painter, I find that paint resembles clay in many respects and I have learned to love the work of pulling form from the colored mud.I paint what I see, the people and things that draw my eye. The more I look, the more there is to observe. The world opens up and flowers; the mud takes form. My painting, like the world I see, is unfolding, in motion and disconcertingly unwilling to be tacked to a specimen tray. The butterflies' wings sweep the light.Artist's Statement For me painting is about seeing and the process of coming to know the world in a deep way. Yet the world is never finished and the joy of seeing it is never complete and so my painting points to the fleeting, the almost, the slanted, the glimpsed& to the life that is always present and so difficult to touch.