MARK BAYER: my ART

I have been doing art for nearly 50 years and serious art for over 43 years.  When I was a teenager, I drew car interiors and outboard motors.  They were related to my interests at the time so I drew them endlessly.  When I entered college in the late 1960's (Kansas State University) I enrolled in Architecture but quickly switched to art.  I attended between 1967 and 1972, earning the BFA degree in painting and art history.  My early works were lead and colored pencil drawings which quickly moved to colorful drawings using conte crayon, ink, pencil, acrylic paint, weaving, sewing, and scratchings.  I also did a series of layored, hanging canvas in which the shadow area was the art.  During the 1970's I was greatly influenced by dada (especially Duchamp), Abstract Expressionism, the new dada of Robert Rauschenburg, Jasper Johns and Jim Dine.  During the early 1980's I went full swing into purely conceptual art than gave art up during most of the later 1980's and early 1990's.  I did this because I felt art had become far to commercial and had lost it's direction.  I was also frustrated in the fact that most people knew little about modern art (now called Post Modern) and had little interest in learning about it.  I began doing artwork again during 1999 and continued till around 2006.  Since that time I have occasionally experimented with various techniques and I am currently working on a series of "recycled art" projects.

My art is about internal space.  I attempt to relate surface activity to art images which often mimic icons from past art history. These objects or images date primarily from life or art of the 1940's to the 1970's.  Secondly, I play with one dimensional VS two diminisonal space.  Most of my works contain material objects or are done on a surface about one quarter of an inch thick.  Are they paintings or are they sculptures?  Thirdly, I use a method I call de-construction.  I take an icon which has a general meaning like an object from art history or an image like a flag or leaf, put it in a space which changes the general meaning without necessarily altering the primary understanding of the object apart from the artwork it is placed within.  Finally, I frequently use triangular shaped surfaces or triangular cut outs in my works.  In doing this, I try to break up the traditional square or rectangular art surface and force the viewer to look around the piece.  The unusual shape or internal void, causes the objects or shapes within the work to carry more significance.  For me, art is about concepts, ideas, or intellectual musings rather than image or subject matter. 

Beginning in 2007, I will be working on several "Conceptual" art projects.  The first three will be the "Telephone" project, the second, "My Works in Famous Museums" project, and finally, the "Paper Dropping" project.  As they progress, I will discuss them on my "Conceptual Art" web page.

To view more artworks:  www.markbayerart.mysite.com/photo.html

                               and:   www.markbayerart.mysite.com/photo3.html

Click on individual works and they will enlarge!

I was born in 1948 in Manhattan, Kansas, attended Kansas State University (earning a B.F.A.degree), and moved to Kansas City in 1973.  I attended different colleges and universities till the early 1990's earning another B.A., an M.A., and a Ed.D. degree.  I work for a major corpoaraton in a non art related field and have a wife of 43+ years and four children in whom I am very proud.  Contact information:  majb56@yahoo.com      phone: 816-454-2891

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