Many Worlds (1999)
76" x 46", mixed media on paper
Following a life-long interest in art that began during his childhood,Mark Rooney
began painting seriously in 1975. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree
from the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia in 1981 and a Master of Fine Arts
degree from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore,Md. in 1983. He also
spent a semester studying art in Rome,Italy in 1980. Since 1983, Mark has combined
a painting and teaching career that together forms the nucleus of his artistic
niche. For the past two decades,Mr.Rooney has taught at numerous colleges and
art schools in the Washington,D.C. area. He has been a regular part-time faculty
member at Montgomery College in Takoma Park,Md. since 1987 and is also currently
Adjunct Professor of drawing and design at the Maryland College of Art and Design
in Silver Spring,Md. In addition, he has taught art to children, the elderly,
and people with Alzheimers disease and other physical and psychological impairments
since 1988 and regularly gives lectures and tours of area art museums with Elderhostel,
based locally at Trinity College, Washington,D.C. He has exhibited his art locally,
nationally, and internationally since 1979. His most notable exhibitions in
the greater Washington,D.C. area include shows at the Washington Project for
the Arts in 1990, the Anton Gallery and the District of Columbia Arts Center
in 1991, and most recently shows at Signal 66 Art Space in 1999 and District
Fine Arts Gallery in September,2000. He has also shown his work nationally at
galleries in Philadelphia,Pa., Baltimore, Md., Richmond,Va. and Chicago, Ill.
Internationally he has had exhibits in Munich,Germany and most notably a two-person
exhibit at the Shirdirani Gallery in New Delhi, India in 1998. This exhibit
and a concurrent 5-week stay in India has informed Mr.Rooney's work ever since.
His most recent art, a series of large scale,mixed media works on paper,uses
visual narrative involving an elaborate system of pictorial symbols,to tell
individual stories, supporting a general thesis concering the human condition.
Each individual piece can be read quite literally merely by deciphering the
symbols which are presented in a fairly straightforward manner and are arranged
to tell a story. Frequently, the content or general theme of each piece is suggested
in the title, giving the viewer a starting point for interpertation. His overriding
concern with use of images and techniques is to create a cohesive pictorial
language that, as clearly as possible, embodies his world view and especially
his concept of the soul or consciousness as existing seperately from the body
and the world we experience with our senses. Drawing on sources as diverse as
Hinduism, Buddhism, Renaissance painting, Rene Descartes, Einstein's theory
of relativity, and his own Roman Catholic upbringing, he attempts in his work
to make manifest the Hindu concept of the Maya, or the world as illusion. A
belief that so-called "waking life" is a dream, no more "real" than the dreams
we have when we sleep, is the core belief at the root of his painterly and philosophical
investigations. He quotes traditional religious iconography as well as media-based
images in an attempt to question what contemporary society worships and why.
He combines realism and abstract expressionism as a method of creating and dispelling
visual illusions often in the same work. By layering materials such as color
pencil, pastel, and acrylic paint, he endeavors to create forms that are tangible
and intangible, both solid and ephemeral. Mr. Rooney believes that the many
lives we lead are a journey toward goodness and each dream of life we experience
is a challenge and a test preparing us for the ultimate reality of non-being.
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