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MARCUS FOR CORRIDOR | MARCUS FOR CORRIDOR | MARCUS FOR CORRIDOR | MARCUS FOR CORRIDOR | MARCUS FOR CORRIDOR
How does your upbringing in Brooklyn along with your family's roots in the American South and Puerto Rico influence your work?
The colors. New York, with its cement and red brick everywhere (although I also pull from this), doesn’t have much color. But a place like New Orleans, where my family comes from, is full of it. From Mardi Gras to the average home. I like to think of my work as a “creoling” or a plethora of references and influences – like my background.
Brooklyn is also important for its diversity. It's also an attitude, a way of being. As KRS-One once said, “Brooklyn keep on taking it”. It's important for art, taking something and making it yours. I do this a lot, even old paintings I love.
You've mentioned that you’re interested in a kind of "filtered realism," where you develop compositions directly on the canvas. Can you walk us through your creative process and how this method shapes the outcome of your pieces?
That was something I came up with early in my painting career. I didn’t think my work fell under the guise of Surrealism or magical realism, but had surrealist elements. So it was my way of trying to best describe a way forward in my work. Now, I don’t like to put any preconceptions or titles on the type of work I do, instead opting to leave it open.
I need there to be an energy buildup. There are periods when I’m processing a new body of work or series of works and that’s usually done outside of the studio, when I’m living life. Research in the form of writing notes down and taking photos, which I consider a form of sketching. Thinking of the moment and what’s needed and most of all, what would make a cool painting. Once I have all of this down and after a ton of contemplation, I’ll get started on a single painting. I’ll let chance and intuition breathe here and, in some kind of alchemical process, the painting comes out. Then the series builds from here.
How do you approach color selection in your paintings, and what emotions or themes are you aiming to evoke through your palette choices?
Choosing colors is a skill. To be able to get it right. Mostly, I’m looking for timelessness. There’s something about Rothko’s colors that lives on forever. I’m looking to do this in my work. Colors in painting are more about light and shadow than they are about color, if you’re using them correctly. If I’m working on a show, I need the colors to be balanced. I need to feel this in the studio with a work, both individually and collectively. I feel that this sentiment will be passed to the onlooker and I want to try and control what I pass on if possible.
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See more of Marcus's work here.
