Four decades of drawing, painting and sculpting the human form — monumental works that confront the human condition with unflinching emotional intensity.
Mark Strickland has been drawing, painting, and sculpting the human form for over 40 years. A figural classicist at heart, he is an immensely gifted and versatile artist — comfortable with epic narrative, yet equally capable of producing work cryptically informed by the immediacy of its incongruent opposites. Straddling High Expressionism and New Traditionalism, his work conveys a perspective filtered through a prism of humanitarian force and emotional intensity.
An adjunct professor at Art Center College of Design for 34 years and former faculty at UCLA, Strickland has exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris, RAFFMA Museum, concentration camp memorials in Dachau and Flossenbürg, and galleries across Southern California, Italy, France, and Germany. His work has been featured on the Emmy-winning television program "E.R." and covered by the Los Angeles Times, Art in America, and international press.
The entire scope of Mark's expression in drawing, painting and ink is informed by a meditation on "how to touch." The range of touch expression with hand, brush and palette knife reflects every conceivable human emotion — tenderness, compassion, fear, remorse, disgust, violence, "touching a soul," prayer and, not the least, pleasure.
It is this "meditation on touch" that gives viewers the experience of something authentic within themselves.
In 2007 and 2008, Mark Strickland's work was exhibited inside the memorial grounds of Dachau and Flossenbürg concentration camps in Germany — among the most solemn and significant venues an artist can be invited to show. The exhibition, titled "Versohnungskirche" (Church of Reconciliation), placed his paintings in direct dialogue with the site of one of history's greatest atrocities.
His series "Here Fly No More Butterflies" — named after a poem written by a child prisoner at Terezín — and "Children of Dachau" stand as testaments to memory, grief, and the insistence that art must bear witness. This body of work earned Mark an Honorary Membership in Rotary Peace International in 2009.
View the Exhibition →British Petroleum • Resurrection of Liberty • Gaza • Broken Angels • The Choice • Atonement • Indomitable Spirit
Bold explorations in ink — raw, immediate, visceral expressions of form and emotion
Urban observations captured in motion — humanity underground, in transit, in between
The foundation of touch — line, gesture, and the immediacy of hand to surface
Studies in anatomy, spirit, and the body as vessel of lived experience
Faces as landscapes — each one a world, a story, a confrontation with the self
Works exhibited at the concentration camp memorials in Germany, 2007–2008
Three-dimensional works — coming soon
A selection of works shown here. The full collection is available upon inquiry for serious collectors and institutions only.
Full CV, exhibition history, and provenance documentation available upon request. Contact us for the complete record.
An intimate documentary exploring Mark's journey — from the roots of his creative vision to the monumental works that have confronted the human condition across four decades.
For museums, galleries, and private collectors interested in acquiring original work by Mark Strickland. All inquiries are handled with discretion. A complete artist CV, provenance documentation, and exhibition history are available upon request.