your brother's blood

your brother’s blood:

an exhibition of new paintings by Mark Horst

March 1—April 30 at the Stillwater Public Library

opening reception: Saturday, March 13, 2:00—4:00 PM

artist’s statement:

Cain killed Abel: murderer and victim. The resentful one; the howling, complaining one; the gifted one; the rejected one; the haunted one. Cain killed Abel, but it was Abel’s blood that cried in the field. Once that happened they were joined forever—brothers. Am I my brother’s keeper? Which brother needs keeping? These paintings hold a space for us to look at ourselves.

I hope the same is true for the mother-child portraits; the portrait of my father; the portrait of a young couple; the seated figures.

For me, the human figure has an evocative energy which may be why I paint the figure more than anything else. The face, the hands, the arms and legs have their own kind of narrative; their own sense of push and pull; of familiarity and otherness.

My portraits attempt to capture this ambivalence—the recognizable features of an individual on the one hand and the skittish, wild soul on the other; the qualities which we recognize in the figure and the light around the body which we often do not.