Mark Bletcher

Artist Statement

I work primarily with oil painting, alongside drawing, printmaking, and processes of collage, layering and transfer. I am drawn to slow, physical media and processes that demand time and material engagement. Pigments, mediums and surface hold resonance for me and are as important as the images I choose to paint. My work can be both flat and have depth; it can be an illusion and a material reality.

Storytelling is central to my work, not only as a subject but as a medium in itself.I think of painting as a portal into another place, an invented world that is fragmented and half-remembered. My images often begin from observation, but are warped, broken or rearranged through collage. This shift of perspective and layering is essential to my work; traces of underpainting, transfers and textural marks remain visible beneath finer paint so the surface holds multiple histories at once.

Thematically, my work is concerned with the mythic and the unconscious, and with the expression of outsiderness. Fantasy becomes a tool for navigating marginalisation, queer identity, mental health, neurodiversity, and the pressure to articulate the self within wider social and political contexts. I am giving a form to the feeling of outsiderness, though worlds that are at once dreamy and unnerving, romantic yet melancholy.

Historically, my earliest influence is medieval art. I often borrow the framing of the medieval world as a magical setting, using its symbolism, atmosphere, and visual logic to speak about the present. Anachronism allows me to question and destabilise classical traditions, often drawing attention to the “folk” or outsider figures who were obscured or erased from historical narratives.

My work also draws directly from Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, particularly their handling of light and colour. These influences sit alongside my engagement with postmodernism, magical realism and queer British art, creating a language that shifts between historical references and contemporary anxieties. Contemporaries of mine utilise storytelling and myth to explore identity and belonging, and I am interested in how these artists construct their own worlds in contrast with my own.

My methodology involves generating and transforming subjective experience into a collective imagination, which often takes the form of fragmentary drawings and notes, collected and ‘enchanted’ into artworks. I also work with archives and cultural organisations, often finding avenues for speculative research within their collections and through engagement with community groups.

Literature and lived experience inform my work, from classical myth to magical realism, as well as ideas about dreams and the subconscious. My palette of blues and browns ties the practice together, lending an otherworldly light. Ultimately, I want my paintings to open a portal where viewers can step into another world, imagine its fragmented stories, and dwell in its tension between beauty and unease. I want a viewer to be transformed in some small way from what they see.