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Mark Maher
March, 2016
This current exploration began with a survey of thousands of children’s coloring book pages, online and through orders from Amazon. It continues my decades-long fascination with banal popular media – and its utility as raw material for my work.
My idea was to create a sort of haiku – traditionally the crystallization of a fleeting moment involving nature, but in this case a meditation on our modern age of violence, excess and endless yearning. I see my result as an attempt to visualize this world of ours, this oh-so-curious Land of Plenty.
My experimental method involves hand-transferring A4 sized “originals” onto 60X80cm sanded plywood boards. It supports my curiosity about how the meanings of images can be transformed through simple alterations of scale, material and process. As has often been the case with my absurdly circuitous ways of working, I developed this particular process for Land of Plenty specifically to serve my investigation.