Mark Witzling spent his professional brand marketing career around writers, designers, and artists who visually shaped his ideas. It was during a trip to Italy that he was moved to helm his own creative trek. Stirred by the frescos of Rome and Florence, where art was intended to be part of the landscape, he picked up a brush when he returned home, diving headfirst into a variety of creative experiences to unleash his own artistic ambition. His foundation began in representational oil painting, but the combination of oil and malleable cold wax together with more introspective subjects steered him toward abstraction. Mark has studied in studios across the country and his work is in the Museum of Encaustic Art in Santa Fe and in collections across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. His work appears in the book Cold Wax Medium – Techniques, Concepts, Conversations (Crowell & McLAughlin) and in 2020 and 2021 he was included in Artfolio, A Curated Collection of the World’s Most Exciting Artists. Mark has received several awards and an Artist Grant from the Regional Arts Commission (St. Louis). He was also selected into the prestigious two-year St. Louis Art Fair Emerging Artist program in 2017-18, and in 2018 he was an artist-in-residence at Chateau Orquevaux in France. He continues to paint regularly in the same studio where he started over 20 years ago. When not in his studio painting, Mark is executive director of Craft Alliance in St Louis. He holds degrees from Macalester College and Boston University.

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Explore Layers + Shape + Line in Oil & Cold Wax Paintings