Presence Witnessing Presence
Contemporary paintings by Mark Bevan
Working across modern cubism, abstraction, portraiture, wildlife and the Alberta landscape, my paintings explore attention, presence and the experience of being seen.
Each work begins with an encounter — a moment of looking, being looked at, and recognizing something of ourselves in what we see.
Original paintings exploring the moment when looking becomes being seen.
Original Works
18" × 24" | Oil Pastel and Acrylic on Canvas Board | Original Artwork
The Price of Fame is part of Mark Bevan’s Modern Cubism collection. This Piece exposes the paradox of getting the life you once dreamed of and discovering what it cost. She is beautiful, successful and carefully composed. She has learned how to present the life expected of her. Almost everything can maintain the illusion. Her eyes cannot.
Original artwork. Signed MC Bevan.
Includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity.
36" × 48" | Oil Pastel and Acrylic on Stretched Canvas | Original Artwork
The moment when you realize you are no longer simply looking at something in nature. Something is looking back. A moose stands quietly among the birch, almost belonging to the shapes, colours and textures surrounding him. His antlers disappear into the trees, his body into the forest floor. But his eyes find ours. I wanted that encounter to feel still rather than dramatic. No movement toward us, no threat and no story we need to understand. For a moment, we are simply two presences sharing the same space. That is what I keep returning to in my work—the possibility that when we pay attention long enough, the distance between observer and observed becomes smaller. Among is an invitation into that moment: to stand quietly, look, and discover that you have also been seen.
Original artwork. Signed MC Bevan.
Includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity.
24" × 24" | Oil on Stretched Canvas | Original Artwork
A storm gathers over a brilliant Alberta canola field, the weight of the sky held against the intensity of the land below. Before It Comes lives in that suspended moment when you know something is approaching, but it has not yet arrived.
The landscape becomes less about a particular place than the experience of standing within it — watching the weather change, feeling the air shift, and becoming aware of your own presence in the vastness.
Part of Mark Bevan's exploration of Presence Witnessing Presence, the painting asks us not simply to look at the landscape, but to notice what happens when we become still enough to feel ourselves within it.
Original artwork. Signed MC Bevan.
Includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity.