the very one no.2 Print

Mark Horst studied pottery, drawing and printmaking in high school and college, but his encounter with Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker led to years of very different work. After earning a Ph.D. in theology from Yale University, he spent time teaching and working toward neighborhood renewal in south Minneapolis. He pursued the craft of painting and drawing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the New York Studio School. He paints in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "If paint were a means of freezing time and protecting us from the dangerous life of the spirit, I would put down my brushes. But, for me, painting is a way of breaking time's grip and setting loose something wild and strong." _______________________________________ Mark Horst carries a quiver full of painterly gifts. His startling work reveals wild pinpricks of the eternal, often in the subtlest of images. Make no mistake, the paintings sometimes hold our feet to the flame-a door between a collectively understood image and some new paint-spirit that comes hurtling through. Not always a comfortable experience. That door is also a gateway between the tacit and the explicit-his sheer feel and technique is obvious, but there are other energies at work here too, some ancient condition of the soul. Horst is one of the few new painters to hold the paradox of tradition and innovation within him- there is brilliance here. MARTIN SHAW, author, teacher and painter.