Mark Andy Garcia: ArtfairPH/Projects: COUNTLESS TRIES. 17-19 February, 2023

BPI PRESENTS

ArtfairPh/Projects

Countless Tries

Mark Andy Garcia’s work has been labeled as intuitive, naive, gestural, and expressionist; the marks and textures on the canvases leave evidence of the painter’s hand, presence, and persona. Painting for Garcia is a reflective practice, painfully honest at times. Without having to retell his experiences on his canvases, landscapes, sunflowers, and figures in interiors become representations of the inner self. Oil paint, his medium of choice, becomes a substance for inscribing his seasons, joys, crises, or moments of gratefulness, all the while acknowledging the relationship of the flesh to the eternal. It is in these ways that Garcia bridges the gap between faith and work in unexpected ways.

Throughout much of his illustrious career, Mark Andy Garcia has always been drawn to portraying the rich inner life of individuals, where thoughts and emotions are as real as trees and rivers and shape how the world is perceived and experienced. This world in Garcia’s works is invariably nature, depicted with vigorous strokes and primeval colors, in a style often referred to as Expressionism. However, for the artist, it is ultimately a record of the impulses, compulsions, and longings that accompany one’s search for meaning. For Garcia, truth, faith, and belief are not abstract concepts, but deeply felt realities that pervade our daily lives, even if they are fleeting and elusive as sunsets.

Building on a recent solo exhibition at Silverlens, Garcia’s suite of works reflects on a crossing of thresholds brought about by loss. Rather than dwelling on what could have been, the artist confronts a self stripped of certainties, depicted as a figure journeying through a forest or subtly merging with elemental forces. Through watery reflections, nature is doubled in the works, as if to emphasize the potential for a new self and world to emerge, where a hundred questions are answered and countless tries lead to a long-awaited outcome.