Although Arleen Mark’s paintings are of mid-sized dimension they nevertheless are epic in their expression.  But because these paintings are so explicitly abstract their heroic qualities are also lyrical in their effect.  Mark relies on high contrast, intense colors and dynamic imagery to express herself.  In a painting like White Heat you can

Arleen Mark, White Heat

almost physically feel the fire that appears to rage in the imagery.  But the emotional temperature of the piece is what you walk away with; a frightening consumptive beauty. Yet even though the forms in this painting (supported by the title) suggest a fiery tempest an alternative take suggests the resplendent drama of an autumn landscape.

Mark’s color sense is magnificent for the subtle blending of blacks and whites with colorful tones.  You see this in a piece like Opus where the central forms ‘read’ as white but are a complex mixture of whites and creams.  More explicit color fills in the edges of the forms and the surrounding blacks are a rich combination of dark and very subtle hues.  Color is critical to this work for the sublime way in which it augments the forms and the accompanying emotions.

Arleen Mark, Opus

These paintings achieve some of the same things Michael Mazur’s prints do but from the opposite end of the spectrum.  Mark gets at a similar quality of mood but from a volatile perspective.  A sense of place is expressed in this work as found in intense dreams. In this regard the imagery often invokes spectral references and what unfolds is poetically non-specific.  This of course opens up the content and interpretations for the work and reveals its real beauty. In the end it becomes less important to derive or assign specific meanings for these paintings but rather to absorb their nuanced emotions. 

Arleen Mark, Eye of the Storm