Creative Caversham – Mark Webber

Drawn to Art

THOSE WHO enjoy the visual arts might assume that painting and drawing have a fundamental place in art schools: in fact, the opposite is true. “Nowadays,” explained Mark Webber, alumni of the Falmouth School of Art, “it’s all about the concept, not the practise. Things are different on the Continent, but some art students these days have never drawn or had any experience of drawing. “But I think that you see things differently when you can draw.”
Mark, who grew up in Caversham and attended The Hill and then Highdown, didn’t come from an artistic family. But he always enjoyed art – and loved to draw. “I started drawing and doodling when I was very young, aged six or seven. By the time I was 13 I would always sketch for around an hour every evening, before I went to bed. No one else in my family did anything like this.
“I went to Reading College and did a graphic design course. Then I went off to Falmouth University and assumed that with graphic design I would get a job in the corporate world. However, things worked out a bit differently!”
In fact, a brief set by the International Society of Typographic designers “Where In The World” while at Reading College fired his imagination. “I had visited New York, and I realised that my passion was for selfexpression. I created a large lino cut map of New York, using typography to replicate the disorientation and vibrancy of the streets before leaving Reading College.

In 2006 I produced a map of London for the London Design Fair, then in 2008, and while still at Falmouth I discovered I had been awarded a Silver Cube by the prestigious Art Directors Club of New York for my map of that city. “As well as Amsterdam, I then made maps of Paris and Berlin. Each one led to an increase in scale and ambition. It took me two months to carve the Paris map, using a massive sheet of linoleum lying on my bedroom floor. The biggest was in Berlin, which I did in 2010. At the culmination of this I hosted a public printing, turning the process of printing into a collective event.”

Extraordinarily Mark took on these enormous projects despite coping with chronic arthritis. “I taught myself to use the gouge needed to cut the lino with both my left and right hands, enabling me to give one hand a rest. Seeing the project through is a vital act of will,” he said, although nowadays his latest projects are not at such vast scale.
“After Berlin, I came back to Reading, but it’s hard to find studio space here. Fortunately, Jelly, based at the Broad Street Mall offered me space, and this gave me the chance to work on my solo show which took place in Shoreditch in London in 2014.” Today Mark is an art technician at the Education Department of Reading University. He’s completed a map of Bath, and is working on his hometown, Reading, while developing new artistic ideas such as digital drawing, as well as going back to his first love – drawing. “I like sketching live,” he explained.

“I’m currently running weekly life drawing groups at the Caversham Picture Framers Print Club. I don’t teach as such, but I organise the sessions – it’s for anyone who wants to start or improve their skills. Somehave never drawn before. “We have a model, and the session starts with a series of ‘quick poses’, which start at just one minute. We build up the time to 15 minutes, and the session ends with an hour’s pose. At first people can be shocked at the idea of having just one minute to do their sketch, but they begin to build an intuition for what they can get down. If you only have 30 seconds to a minute, you have to get down what you want quickly… people end up liking the ‘quick pose’ sessions! “The classes are limited to 12 people, and the age range is mixed from people in their 20s up. They really value this opportunity, and I am really grateful to Alex Foster for opening up the Print Club and creating this space to encourage the arts and give these opportunities to help our local community.”

Having found international acclaim Mark is now very much Reading based, and there will be a chance to see some of his work here before long. In October he will be joined by sculptor Roger Smalley and artist, printmaker and ceramicist Robert Fitzmaurice for an exhibition at the Caversham Picture Framers entitled Modern Forms. “I’ll be showing some of my abstract prints, some original drawings, and there will also be a couple of my maps!”