Color, Light, and Memory: Examining the Work of Mark Mulhern

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At first glance, Milwaukee artist Mark Mulhern’s work seems both surprisingly simple and deceptively complex. Whatever the painting’s specific context, the artist’s figures seem to float in bright seas of blue, green and yellow. Basic in their individual details, the characters often share more complex natures made evident by their poses, their captured movements or their glances.

“I’ve always been a figurative artist, which has a lot to do with my college training,” says Mulhern, 73, a Portage native and graduate of both Milwaukee’s former Layton School of Art and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “It seems to be more of a European tradition. I enjoy abstraction, but it must operate at a high level that strikes a balance between abstraction and narrative.”

Thirty of the artist’s paintings, all heavily influenced by considerable time he has and continues to spend in France, comprise the core of “Mark Mulhern: The Pleasure of Seeing,” an exhibit now on display at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend. The exhibit is both a retrospective and the largest exhibition of his work to date, according to MOWA Executive Director Laurie Winters. 

“Mulhern’s work is strikingly original and today he is arguably producing his best paintings,” Winters adds. “An in-depth assessment of his long career was definitely in order.”

France and Freud

The artist credits the works of French painters Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, and Japanese artist Chuta Kimura as key influences. But there was another major influence unique to both his personality and style.

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“Back in 1980, I started Freudian psychoanalysis, working with an analyst who had to complete a certain number of caseloads for his research,” Mulhern remembers. “Instead of analyzing my dreams, I would paint certain things and we would discuss them. I suppose I had some issues to work through, too, but I found the experience a very exciting way to think and paint.”

His trips to France, starting in the mid-1980s at about the time Neo-expressionism began to wane, dovetailed nicely with his growing sensitivity toward image, intellect and emotion, he says. He initially spent a year in France and travels back there annually to visit friends and gather inspiration for his works. “I get into a visual mode when I am in France, observing people, filling up sketchbooks and taking notes,” he explains. “The color and the light, especially in the south of France, are spectacular, creating a beautiful and sensuous environment.”

Among Mulhern’s many observations he notes that the French love to eat and drink, talk and socialize, and dress up for whatever social occasion they’re in. Such themes have become common in the artist’s canvases. Neo-expressionism also made its mark on Mulhern’s work, he says. “The Neo-expressionist period was so much about me that it was almost an excessive self-evaluation,” he says. “My later works has been about observation, how people express and carry themselves. But I identify with the figures I paint, and I just want to create a world that’s beautiful and nuanced with psychology.

“My painting has to be better than just okay to be interesting to me,” Mulhern adds. “I just want to make a beautiful painting, follow my own voice, and paint what I like.”

Mark Mulhern: The Pleasure of Seeing will be on display through July 21 at the Museum of Wisconsin Art, 205 Veterans Ave., West Bend. Details at wisconsinart.org.

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Milwaukee Art Museum

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Milwaukee Art Museum

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Haggerty Museum of Art

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