Mark Youd is an artist working in a farmhouse near Kilmacolm, around fifteen minutes west of Glasgow airport, and he is throwing open the doors of his home studio – well, by appointment at least. 

Visitors are invited to stand face-to-face with the portraits on the walls, learn about techniques and artistic processes from works in-progress on the easels and are free to delve into the spiritual, scientific and philosophical ideas behind the drawn, painted and sculpted surfaces.

Mark trained as a draughtsman and, with a keen interest in art history, taught himself to paint and sculpt. Parallel to a successful career as a designer and technical illustrator, he developed his personal artistic practice; exploring psychology through portraiture.

His ideas have evolved across artistic disciplines – drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture – and his work ranges from the traditional portrait, as exhibited at the Scottish Portrait Awards 2024, to expressive statements of the internal human landscape and abstract work linking the portrait with the fundamental forces of nature.

With a wide interpretation of portraiture, Mark’s work is about more than just the person that sat for him in the Kilmacolm studio, it asks bigger questions. What can ink, paint and clay tell us about being human?

By deconstructing the portrait, by chipping away at external appearance, we are offered a chance to glimpse evidence of the soul, while being reminded of our inextricable link to the Earth and the effects of time through textures and colours evocative of corroded metal and eroded rock.

Viewers are challenged to experience portraiture beyond the expected boundaries, just as those attending the studio for art tuition are encouraged to use traditional techniques in unconventional ways.

Examining the influence of conscious thought and action on creativity, bringing to mind the surrealists’ experiments in automatism, and intuitive, sometimes frenzied mark-making contrasted with deliberate, analytical artistic processes, as seen in his intricate woodcuts and expressive sculptures, Mark seeks to describe the human psyche in two and three dimensions.

To arrange a studio visit please contact studio@markyoud.co.uk