Look : See
When Mark first went to visit L’École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, he had the sensation of entering the Garden of Eden mixed with Hieronymus Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" Inside there were young artists of all shapes and persuasions. He immediately felt the urge to take advantage of an opportunity to spend more time exploring and meeting the students there and to see their creations. He had the feeling he was entering a work of art. Thus he undertook this series of portraits with the idea of the relationship between looking and actually seeing just as artists themselves look intentionally with purpose to see and translate — or transpose visually — their understanding.
These young artists, while still students, are doubly aware of how their portrait will be depicted: they lend themselves to the difficult exercise of becoming a work (of art) themselves, in the space wherein they create. This breeding ground, the Beaux Arts, is where they encounter their own potential creativity and their future. They know that the image they want to project must be as close as possible to what drives them deeply. In their studios, a place of constant flux where nothing stands still, they have the possibility to appear in resonance with their works and give us a glimpse inside themselves.