Mark Gibbs creates animal sculptures, exciting mixed media paintings, oil paintings and watercolours. He brings a fresh vision to landscape painting and abstracts

He has been a finalist in the 2010 and 2011 Wildlife Artist of the Year Competition run by the David Shepherd Foundation.

Perhaps prompted by the threat to the arctic, Mark's recent work has taken on a Northern theme depicting creatures of forest and tundra and referencing prehistoric art.

Animals such as; bison and reindeer are presented as shamanic guardian spirits, beasts of power with ancient antecedence, yet increasingly isolated, inhabiting a diminished, fractured environment.

The work explores the contrast between the strength and resilience of these animals and the fragility of life

Mark's painting is characterized by an interest in the colour and texture of landscape, and of natural processes. Ambiguity is another characteristic, some of the work hovers between 2D and 3D. Are they colourful paintings on thick shaped canvas; or shallow, wall sculpture?