Let There Be Colour!

Mark Lovejoy creates stunning hypnotic images, which are colourful psychedelic statements of a ground-breaking art field. 

At the outset of a brand new year, let us try to look at the world with fresh eyes and bright colours! When news broadcasts open daily with descriptions of natural disasters, devastating wars, dramatic accidents and other such sad situations, we do need to “wash” our eyes with beauty and colour.


Now that is exactly what Texan artist Mark Lovejoy does with his mind-blowing art work, whose characteristics seem to find their sources in their creator’s own surname. In fact, his art offers viewers richly coloured delusionary images looking like digital renderings, resulting from a complex process. In the artist’s own words, he states that “these are not photographs of paintings – no painting exist. These images are of something as fleeting as a street scene or a sunset – illuminated pigments, diluents, extenders, resins, oils, fillers, waxes, drying agents, etc”. He further explains that he uses what is commonly called the CMYK colour model, a four-colour process used in colour printing, whose name stands for the four inks of printers; Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black).

Mark Lovejoy’s creations evoke an act of chemistry – or even alchemy, magic as they look – since he mixes all the above-mentioned materials (resins, oils, diluents, waxes and drying agents) to achieve the thick, deep textures he offers us. Through a long and meticulous process, parts of these mixed paints are then photographed, reworked, reshot, until Lovejoy is happy with the result.

A close and attentive observation of Mark Lovejoy’s images inevitably evokes the genius of Jackson Pollock’s art as far as forms are concerned, and – quite contradictorily – the delicious taffy candy of our childhood for their texture. They further bring to our minds the works of David Lidbetter, a London-based photographer who is having great success, owing to his predilection for wild texture and colour.

Mark Lovejoy is quite secretive about the way he works and about the possible meanings of his creations, for he says that they are not “intended to reveal something about the viewer. Form and energy derive from organic roots, recognized but undefined, something fundamental that has been referenced or exposed”.

However, Lovejoy – who considers himself to be a photographer – admits the influence in his creations of his father’s work as a geologist, for although abstractions, he draws his inspiration from rocky landscapes or the intricate contours of the human brain.

All in all, Mark Lovejoy’s innovative and mind-blowing creations are absolutely hypnotizing and provide a mesmerizing gaze at the properties of paint, whose various pigments may seem to move fluidly as fabric, looking like a textile piece blowing in the wind.