Mark Fraser-Betts’s recent drawings and paintings take inspiration from loss, distance, time and memory.
After a period of time working in film, Mark accidentally returned to painting during lockdown. Whilst looking after a new baby and waiting for his wife (a nurse) to return from the city, Mark began to paint in the evenings as a form of escape. These new abstract paintings were very simple experiments made from leftover house hold paint and scraps of wood found in the basement.
‘The first paintings were very automatic and were made in a trance like state with no intention of seeing the outside world, they formed the path to me rediscovering my voice.’
While deeply effected by personal loss around this period, Mark took inspiration from the book ‘How I live Now’ by Meg Rosoff, as well as other subjects that link to loss, memory and time. Mark began to photograph himself with text paintings and send cheap drop cloths back to friends in the UK asking them to take photographs then return them. Some of the subjects in these text works led to the realization of drawings. The drawings and watercolors Mark makes have a teenage obsessive quality to them. Carefully picking subjects that sometimes have personal or British connection. Art history, youth culture, Acid house and London are some of the subjects that feature in the work.