Mark Sullivan is an interdisciplinary artist who finds joy in repetition. While his work has often incorporated a variety of media—paint, photography, found objects, digital software—his current work exclusively uses a black Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball pen and white paper. His many years working as a book cover designer taught him the value of simplicity and the power of immediacy and he brings those lessons to all of his work. Raised on the east coast, he has called Albuquerque home since 2015. 

Artist Statement:

Much of my work is filled with time-consuming repetition. When I sat down to try something new, I immediately wanted to fill the blank page with loose and random lines, what I call scribbles. As soon as I did this, it felt like a sort of breakthrough. 

Each of these pieces begins with a line, a simple placement of pen to paper with no initial intent other than to let my hand go where it wants to go. Soon the lines take shape, the positive and negative spaces become clearer and options for what comes next emerge. Will I fill the individual spaces with dot patterns? Will I go even further and black out whole areas by building up the ink to the extent that very little of the white space remains? This is where the joy resides, in allowing for possibility.

Sometimes scribbling is dismissed as something kids do but I think it can be very powerful. That’s why I am happy to call this new work the Scribble Series.