“My work is about my connection to my surroundings. The subjects of my pictures are things that are familiar and immediate to me. I paint and draw from life. It is an intimate view of those objects, spaces and people around me. I try to paint my subjects with an attentiveness to the particular qualities present in them.”
Mark Karnes received his MFA in painting from Yale University in 1972 and his BFA in painting from Philadelphia College of Art. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council as well as a Fulbright-Hayes grant for study in Florence, Italy. His work has been widely exhibited both nationally and internationally and can be found in numerous private and museum collections, including the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Karnes lives in Baltimore, MD, where he has taught drawing and painting at Maryland Institute College of Art since 1974.