John Mark Gleadow
John-Mark Gleadow was born in 1976 in central Delaware, just a few minutes from where he currently resides. After graduating from the University of Delaware in 1999 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, he immediately began his professional career as an artist having been awarded solo shows, accolades, and even gallery representation while still a student.
Early influences on the young artist were Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, and Vermeer. John-Mark values great technical proficiency in the medium of oil paint, coupled with the original and often surreal subject matter. Like these artists, John-Mark prefers to work in oils because of its richness and durability.
Beginning with still lives, John-Mark’s paintings soon came to have portraiture as their backbone. In his widely collected Bibliotheque Series, he has combined creating paintings of book spines with his love of doing portraiture and this has allowed him to broaden the thematic possibilities of his paintings.
“One of the wonderful things about this series is how limitless the subject matter is and how it makes for a logical way of juxtaposing different subjects, producing a work of art that’s beautiful as a whole, not just aesthetically, but thematically as well.”
