"Mark King, a champion of Impressionism and the Ecole de Paris, was born in Bombay in 1931 of British parents. He is the product of an exotic and privileged upbringing in India, where he lived until the age of sixteen during the tumultuous last days of the British Raj. In 1948, following graduation from La Martiniere College in Calcutta, where his focus had been botany as well as art, King sailed to England to attend Bournemouth College of Art, having determined to pursue painting, sculpture, architecture and theater design. In 1961 King decided to concentrate on painting and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts and the Louvre. Mark King moved to the United States in 1968.
For subjects he knows intimately, like Paris street scenes, King draws from memory. For sporting subjects, on the other hand, the camera is an indispensable tool. He takes several photographs of a subject, condensing various views or themes into one composition, without exactly reproducing nature. Small pencil sketches noting color and compositional motifs act as reminders of feelings and responses to events and vistas King admires. From these two sources, King produces vibrant preliminary drawings in gouache, devising structural and visual solutions for larger canvases, which he executes in acrylic. King uses palette knife ninety percent of the time, only using brush for small details.
Mark King’s original paintings and serigraphs can be found in some of the most prestigious fine art collections throughout the world including the Bush Presidential Library."
