Mark Ruchlewicz

Painter

I am inspired to paint our world, it’s good, it’s bad and its challenges.

Born in Toronto, I fell in love with drawing and painting at an early age. Growing up I could often be found drawing on the reverse side of my father’s large architectural plans. Following my passion for art, I studied visual fine arts and education at York University, graduating in 1984. I began participating in art exhibitions then and have been in galleries and exhibitions throughout the GTA ever since. I enjoyed a career of teaching art at the high school level for 30 years until I retired in 2014. Back in the early 90’s I had made some of my paintings available for commercial purposes through stock image companies that marketed and sold my work around the world digitally. The body of work I have created to date is rather eclectic. It ranges quite a bit in terms of subject matter, style, media and size. Many of my works that are centred around environmental themes utilize a hard-edge technique. Surrealist and symbolic elements dominate more recent paintings in which the worker’s challenges are the main theme. These are completed using an underpainting and impasto technique. I have also adopted a curved surface for a series of night sky paintings. My latest painting measures 8 feet by 32 feet and is a profile rendering of an A1 Abrams tank. With embedded Military Industrial Complex logos, this piece titled “Low Visibility” examines the connection between capitalism and war. For the most part, the common thread running through my work is that it is primarily painted using acrylics in a representational style. I enjoy working in this style because I think this type of imagery is accessible to the non-artist. I am inspired to paint about the world, its good, bad, and all its challenges, in a way that engages this wider audience.