Mark Gleason was born in 1962 in Greenwich, CT, and has been creating visual art since childhood. In 1984 he moved to New York to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio arts from Syracuse University. Gleason later moved back to Connecticut where he received a Master of Science in art education from the University of Bridgeport. Gleason enjoys the private act of painting, as well as the public process of being an educator.

Gleason’s psychically charged mythical realism focuses on figures and liminal spaces in our increasingly fragile environment. His animals and individuals explore connections and emphasize emotional meaning through pose, composition, and lighting. Elements of fire, water, earth, and sky feature prominently in his work, and he also relates these to his color palette.

Drawing on approaches and references from literature, music, philosophy, ecology, and the figurative old masters, Gleason’s oil paintings are at once visceral, austere, mischievous, and absurd.

“I paint from my inside outward, and the painting surface is corporeal. Though I work quite deliberately, consciously employing both traditional and innovative techniques, my unconscious associations direct my images, narratives, and themes. Somewhere between inception and completion I ask the painting to convey a narrative and to astonish, disturb, seduce and convince.”