Mark Briscoe - The Interior Designer's Artist

Mark Briscoe was born on the 19th of December 1964. In Watford, Hertfordshire, U.K. (named: Mark Francis Drake-Briscoe) His early years were spent in the West Country in the county of Somerset. When he was six his father bought a house on the moorland countryside of Dartmoor in Devon. From an early age he showed a strong interest in artistic activities and when he left school he studied graphic design and fine art for two years at college in Torquay. He then went to live in London in the mid 1980's and it was here that he learned some fundamental techniques in paint finishes while employed at a painting restorer's workshop in Covent Garden. He had also at this time started to develop a fascination with oriental lacquer and eastern miniature painting. The museums of London provided a rich source of inspiration, with their collection of Chinese and  Japanese artefacts and the "Art of India" collections at the Victoria & Albert museum.

Briscoe started to experiment with some techniques for painting lacquered furniture. The experience he had gained working for a restorer had taught him a few tricks, in particular the use of gesso in priming a wooden surface which enables one to achieve a highly smooth ground on which to apply lacquer, a traditional technique that has been used by craftsmen over the centuries. He also learned some methods for painting fine gold decorative designs in the Persian style which he used to decorate small items of furniture. Although he was producing some fantastic results Briscoe was not fully satisfied with his achievements, and in 1988 he made a trip to India where he met an artist called Ram Krishna Sharma who made a living painting traditional Indian miniatures. Sharma lived in the beautiful city of Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan, Northern India.

Sharma invited Briscoe to stay and learn the art of miniature painting, an opportunity which Briscoe jumped at having already seen what could be achieved with the skilful handling of an Indian miniaturists brush. The next few months of tuition under the guidance of R K Sharma taught Briscoe more about painting than all the years he had spent at college back in England. The use of line as practised by the Indian Masters with a very fine squirrel hair brush and a gum based paint solution were the basic foundations of all the great Eastern traditions of painting, whether Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Persian, the use of a gracefully flowing stylised line ran through all of them. By mastering the brush techniques employed in Indian miniature painting he realised that they could be successfully applied in other forms of artistic expression and would be of particular value in Chinoiserie decoration on lacquer furniture.

In December of that year Mark Briscoe married a girl called Sandhya that he met in a small town called Kalyan near Mumbai, He continued to live with her family making periodic visits to see his teacher back in Rajasthan. He had already made some useful contacts in Bombay and was given a number of commissions including some murals in the Juhu beach residence of Rajesh Shah, the director of Mukand Steel. He also spent some time working on several projects in the palatial Poona residence of Sri Mataji Nirmala Devi.

There he painted some more murals and a very large ceiling painting in one of the main halls displaying a colourful floral network of spiralling arabesques on a huge arched ceiling forty feet in length supported at intervals by columns, a project which took several months with a large team of artists. During this period in Poona Briscoe began to experiment with some ideas that had long been in his mind. He started to develop some techniques for painting Indian compositions on a large scale format but sticking to the traditional themes used in Indian miniatures.

He was aware that India had a tradition of painting large wall hangings (called Pichhavais) but these lacked the subtle tinting found in the finest of miniatures, especially those miniatures painted on small sheets of ivory where the colours are applied very thinly exploiting the pale background tone of the ivory which shines through creating a beautiful luminosity. This same effect he achieved in his paintings with great success, creating a depth and richness of tone that has a soothing effect and is pleasing to the eye. In addition to the paintings he has also employed this valuable knowledge of Indian brush work in his chinoiserie decoration of lacquer furniture, successfully applying detailed foliage, flowers, and trees to coloured lacquer backgrounds.

In 1991 Mark Briscoe moved to Brighton in the South coast of England where he continued to work until 2001 when he moved with his wife and two children to Zaragoza in north eastern Spain. Here he began to experiment with the techniques of the old European master artists using both egg tempera and oils as a medium for painting on panels. To begin with Mark painted classic landscapes with great success and then moved on to a more expressive style of work using thick impasto paint strokes with bright sections of colour surrounded by a fairly bold dark line, a style similar to that of the fauvists or post- impressionists.

His works have been bought by art collectors such as Lord Swraj Paul, RamolaBachchan and Rajesh Shah (of Mukund steel) He has also worked on several creative projects in conjunction with interior designers Neena Campbell, Joanna Wood and Victoria Waymouth.but only since he started exhibiting with galleries in the USA has his work begun to attract attention from a much broader audience, Mark's current style of composition has had an instant appe

al with US collectors. His work has been featured in several magazines including Architectural Digest, House and Garden, the front cover of Resurgence magazine and India Today.

(See: http://www.fineartpartnership.com/  to see some of Mark Briscoe's latest works or contact Claire Swait csoffice@virginmedia.com for more information on Mark, to view or to commission a work.)