About

Mark Richards, The Artist

Welcome to my gallery.  I’m Mark Richards, artist, photographer and printmaker.  The art in my gallery is called “Luminous Photo Impressionisms” which is a unique blend of painting and photography together.  My father pioneered much of this during the time he worked at the National Gallery of Canada for nearly 25 years.  While there he managed the photographic division and developed Canada’s first multimedia division in the museum community.  He has personally been a working artist and master photographer for over 30 years and I trained directly under him.

A Photo Impressionism starts with an extremely high resolution photograph that I take which captures the subtle lighting of the scene.  Later in my studio I work directly with the negative manipulating texture, shadow, highlight and colour, always moving their latitude, gamma and dynamic range deep into the classic genre of traditional fine art.  I then apply my unique signature sharpening technique to the surface of each work achieving a clarity causing my images to literally leap off the canvas.

I then use the finest digital screening system available.  Each photo impressionism is laid directly to canvas using UV protected pigments which are fade resistant for over 100 years.  Due to their extremely wide colour gamut I am also able to paint with literally billions of colours on each negative.  This unique approach constantly allows me to revisit my work time and again improving each impression over the last.

As if all this isn’t enough, I now push the limits of their illumination.  Manipulating light is essential to my work therefore I use canvas made from substrates that reflect 90% of the incident light.  The combination of translucent pigments and ultra bright backgrounds causes the work to literally glow in extremely low light thus the term “Luminous”.

Concerning shipping, all works destined within Canada and USA come fully stretched and ready to hang. When shipping out of British Columbia there is no provincial tax and out of Canada there are no taxes at all.   For overseas clients I provide a mailing tube with the rolled canvas inside which they can carry onto the plane.  Once home, they simply have the canvas stretched at their local frame shop.  This is a safe and convenient solution that requires a 24 hour notice to prepare and includes a discount offsetting the cost of stretching the artwork.

My goal today, as an understudy of one of our best contemporary artists in Canada, is to use my father’s vast technical and fine art background along with my own processing techniques to further the genre of art in general.  My collection is the result of a tireless pursuit of excellence which can be seen in each and every piece and for this privilege and gift I am truly thankful.

Mark Richards. 

Artist, Photographer, Printmaker.