Baker Artist Portfolios

Bio

Mark West is a Baltimore-Native assemblage artist, muralist, and historian. After receiving his BA in World History and Chinese from New York University Shangha and University of Paris, West relocated to NYC to create Mark West Center for the Arts, formerly known as the House of Mark West, his own 501 c3 Nonprofit cultural art center. Currently Mark West manages his own art space called Art Space Vidigal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and work between Baltimore and Rio.

Statement

“My art is an immersive experience. I create full scenes designed to help the viewer escape reality or to inspire them out of depression. I base my content on my research as a historian, my travels around the world and life in Baltimore, and biblical stories.

Stylistically, I generally paint jet black people in humanistic dramatic settings. Some may think of blackface when they see my art, but blackface was actually inspired by African art extending 3000 years ago, found in ancient Egyptian and Kushite pyramid art. My work is a reclamation of ancient African art. Most of the history is erased so I repaint those characters in powerful and meaningful depictions to pay homage to ancestral African and in process, create new stories. I take black subjects and transmute them through a process I call Afro-reverence. The ultimate goal is to elevate what black means. Black is also my favorite color because no matter what color you mix with black, the color will still be black making it more powerful than the other colors. Black is the color of carbon, which is the foundation of life, and black is a color of luxury, that is why I like painting jet, black people.”