Today we’d like to introduce you to Mario M. Muller.
Mario, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I suffer from daily attacks of Aesthetic Arrest. You know, when something is so perfect, so pleasing, so visually engaging that your knees get weak and your lungs forget to inhale. Goosebumps or shivers can creep in. This can happen in a museum as easily as it does on a street corner. I’m an equal opportunity appreciator.
Sharing these moments of awe and delight is what is at the core of my art-making practice.
My heart belongs to cities, and thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that my primary iconography be urban. New York and Los Angeles are the twin polarities of my focus.
While the New York centric work is mostly populated with commuting professionals and destination-driven masses, the Los Angeles based work finds architecture and the verdant nature of the Southland as the primary topic of investigation.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Around about 1999, I chose India Ink as my primary medium. It’s a lightfast medium that captures the purity of my chosen iconography. If my images are shadows and silhouettes, in essence, I’m painting the lack of light. India Ink is perfect for depicting this blackness. That having been said, India Ink is an unforgiving medium to work with. There’s no erasing. I never paint white, so all the white/light that you see in my paintings is the white of the paper. I’ve been 30-40 hours into a piece and made a mistake, and I’ve had to start all over.
Looking at my work, you might suspect that I suffer from a sincere case of Heliotropism. And you would be correct. Light, and most notably the absence of light, has been at the core of my artistic raison d’ être for the past 30 years.
I usually dismiss feature in favor of form. Shadows and silhouettes define the beauty, grace, and balance of my observed world.
My paintings on paper hover between fact and fiction; for a while, I often rely on a camera as a note-taking apparatus, placement, choreography, scale, and context are all studio-based fabrications. In these fabrications, I gravitate to evocation rather than illustration. I would prefer to have a multitude of interpretations be catalyzed by a single image.
The sterotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
Pursuing the arts, regardless of discipline, is not for the faint of heart. In my case I didn’t choose art, art chose me. Tenacity, myopia, passion, and a wonderful community of like-minded creatives have made my journey an adventure. And even after 33 years as a full time practicing fine artist, the adventure hasn’t waned.
I have maintained that creativity should be applied to one’s entrepreneurial enterprise as much as on one’s canvas.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
Over a thirty-year career, I’ve had the pleasure of executing several Public Art Commissions. The Louisville International Airport, The Kentucky Center for Performing Arts and the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority all have major pieces that can be visited 24 hours a day. In Los Angeles, I’m in numerous corporate Collections and a plethora of private home, both luxury and modest.
I currently serve as the Artist in Residence for the Stephen Wise Temple in Bel Air, where I consult on a wide array of projects. The most recent and ambitious is over 90 paintings as illustrations of a new High Holiday Prayer book due out in late 2019.
I encourage people to make appointments for Studio visits. I can be commissioned for large scale corporate projects. My work comes alive with intelligent eyes. I participate in numerous exhibits each year.
Contact Info:
- Website: mariomuller.com
- Email: mm@mariomuller.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trufflehunting/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mario.muller
- Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/mariomuller
- Other: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariomuller/
Image Credit:
Mario M. Muller
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