* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Marc Trujillo earned a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from Yale University School of Art.
Marc explains his work by saying, “The places I paint exist in the shared spaces of the everyday. Two hundred yards of polished concrete or linoleum gives me a little chill. I’m captivated by the middle ground, the purgatory of the world we’ve made and share as North Americans, in a way that makes me want to paint it. The places in the paintings are locations that are non-destinations, particularly North American kinds of nowhere, at once ubiquitous and yet largely unseen. My interest is in the mix of shame and awe I feel, but also in the visual potential for painting of what I’m experiencing.”
He continues, “It is always the individual work that is the ultimate arbiter for its constituent parts. The paintings are fundamentally synthetic in nature, and represent not only the experience of direct observation, but also an appreciation and awareness of paintings and painters of the past. The finished work is the sum total of a series of continual explorations, refinements and distillations, all of which begin with drawing and preparatory sketches. My aim is to create work that speaks of the present, yet is also actively engaged with painting’s long history. Light is singularly important for me, as it serves to organize the work and is the one element that all aspects of the painting must agree on to convey.”