Mark Gaston Pearce

Mark Gaston Pearce was born 1953 in Brooklyn, New York and has lived for over three decades in Buffalo, New York.  Art has always been a significant part of his life.  He doodled to get through boring classes and during his youth drawn many a superhero and musician to visualize his fantasies and give him comfort during those nerdy high school years.  Later, art became his vehicle of expression regarding the human condition. He now devotes practically all of his artistic energies to oil painting and although he pursued a fulfilling career in the practice of law and government service, he has been painting for over 40 years. 

With the exception of a few semesters of formal training in painting and drawing at Cornell University, Mark is primarily self-taught.   His principal subject is that which he still find most interesting, the human form.  He remains fascinated with all that is projected from a gaze, the interaction of figures on the street, the symphony of gesture.  His influences are jazz (bebop in particular); the paintings of Palmer Hayden and murals of Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Hale Woodruff; the amazing depression era and World War II photographs of Dorothea Lang and the lives and experiences of the sages in his family. 

Formerly on the Board of Directors of Buffalo Arts Studio and the Advisory Council of the Burchfield Penny Art Center, Mark Gaston Pearce has exhibited at several venues throughout the years including:  Art Expo and opening of the Buffalo Museum of Science’s Lillian P. Benbow Visual Arts Gallery, April 2016(contributing artist);Buffalo Arts Council Hope & Honor, New Paintings by Mark Pearce, February – March 2002 (solo exhibition); Making the Connection – Collaboration of the WNY Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site and The Burchfield Penny Art Center - January1999 (contributing artist); Exhibition of Local African-American Artists; Ikenga Gallery, 1993 (contributing artist).