Born  in Brooklyn, New York with a big chunk of his life spent in Buffalo, New York, Mark has always made art a significant part of his life.  Much of his youthful creativity was demonstrated on the margins of books during boring high school classes.    Later, art became his vehicle of expression regarding the human condition. He now devotes most 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. 

 

Apart from 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 the story that is shared in a simple 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 through out the years including:  Images of Us By Us, Burchfield Penney Art Center, March – April 2018 (contributing artist);  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 – January 1999 (contributing artist); Exhibition of Local African-American Artists; Ikenga Gallery, 1993 (contributing artist).