Art Studio Tour: Mark Lewis

Lewis received a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in painting from Yale University.  He is best known for his collage and paintings of the urban landscape and Oklahoma sky.  He doesn’t paint from photographs of sites.  Instead, he works on location, from a sidewalk in downtown Tulsa to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. 

Where you’ve seen it:

Solo exhibitions at Living Arts, Tulsa Artists’ Coalition and M.A. Doran galleries, and the BOK arena.

Ask about:

His early days as a museum guard at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and how his painting process is similar to cooking or improvisational jazz.

Quotable:

“Most of my work is based in direct observation.  I don’t see the way a viewfinder of a camera sees.  I’m more interested in my experience of a place than what a photograph captures of that place. I can tilt my head up and down and back and forth—it’s not just one perspective.”

Guest Blogger: Sarah Jesse, Bernsen Director of Education and Public Programs at the Philbrook Museum of Art.

Meet 10 artists and see their working spaces and during the Tulsa Art Studio Tour April 10 and 11. http://www.tulsaartstudiotour.org/