Label Type
Artist CommentaryLabel
Mark Messersmith holds degrees in art from Indiana University and Fontbonne University and is now a professor of studio art at Florida State University in Tallahassee, where he and his wife Susan make their home. Messersmith has been awarded several fellowships and awards including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painting Award, the Florida Department of State Individual Artist Fellowship Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Fellowship Award for Emerging Visual Artists and the Ford Foundation Artist Fellowship. Messersmith has been exhibiting his work on a national scale for almost 20 years and has been collected by numerous public and private institutions including the City of Orlando, The Nature Conservancy, the Sheraton Hotel, Bal Harbor, Florida, the University of Florida, and Eastman Pharmaceuticals, Maluern, Pennsylvania.
"Since moving to the Southeastern United States in 1985, I have been fascinated with the uniqueness of the regions environment, and the beauty of its lands and animals. While both the land and animals are vulnerable, they share a strong determination for survival and can still offer potential dangers for the unwary visitor.
The fading landscape I paint, is at least for awhile, out there someplace, somewhere just beyond the urban sprawl, shopping malls, and trailer parks. It is still a land of myths and facts, inhabited by powerful birds, vigilant panthers, weary gators, blackwater swamps, old cypress trees, back road citrus stands and careening logging trucks."