ART IN FILM
Art Insists on the Artist By Ca ro l Bada r acco Padge t t
R emember the days when certain people you knew drew stick figures while play- ing Pictionary? And then there were those who actually put appendages and facial features on their people, making the rest of us look bad? Atlanta native Mark Boomer- shine can’t relate to these things, not even close. Because he has always existed in the stratosphere of art talent. “I have always had the ability to create art at a high level,” he confirms. “Even in elementary school my work was once displayed in a collection of youth works at The High Museum of Art.” Yet Boomershine wasn’t always all about art in his early days. He majored in business management at University of Alabama with a minor in studio art. “I would go straight from a finance class to a sculpture class,” he notes. He studied business to go into his family’s business of running auto dealerships, which dated back to 1929. “In my middle 20s I had 150 employees and I was
He works in acrylic paints on canvas, with an admiration for their drying times. “I work very fast and the quick drying time is helpful to my pace,” he says, sharing this about his technique: “I would describe my work as exhibiting an economy of gesture in my strokes. Simply put, one brush stroke in my painting may do the same as 10 brush strokes in another artist’s.” Viewing his work up close gives it an abstract characteristic, Boomershine believes, “but the farther you get from my work the more detail actually begins to come out. I let your brain fill in the gaps.” While Boomershine delved heavily into celebrity works from 2009 to 2013, he then switched to other styles. “But recently I am getting back into Icons,” he shares. “That being said, I have consistently painted Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I have an upcoming show at The Buckhead Art Company where I will revisit Icons.” (Due to COVID, the show was postponed. Follow @markboomershine for updates.) With the film industry budding and growing in Atlanta since 2008, Boomershine is beginning to see his art merge with film. “Interestingly, through my art, an admiring screen writer/director and I connected,” he says, “and I am helping produce a beautiful film shot in Guatemala.” Moving forward, Boomershine looks at his art and his life as an open canvas. “I am constantly striving to better myself and my work, but one thing I have learned is [that] the art business (like any business) can ‘zig’ just when you learned to ‘zag’,” he says. “I look back at my career and feel blessed to have international collectors, a mem- ber of the Whitney Museum Board as a collector, Hollywood A-listers as collectors, and honestly, I just keep plugging and chugging.” Each year he makes an artist’s mark stencil for the back of his pieces, he says. ”I always put them in Latin and have had ‘Keep Moving Forward,’ ‘Never Look Back,’ ‘Stay Humble,’ and this year’s is ‘Nailed It!’” And he closes, “Personally, I keep trying to grow as a person, husband, and father — all of which I adore being.”
100% business,” he states. But in 1999 his family sold the business, and Boomershine was forced to reinvent himself. But he still didn’t go straight into art. “I’ve always been infatuated with off-road adventure, and I created a Land Rover off-road adventure tourism business in Highlands, NC,” Boomershine says. Then four years later, still not devoting himself to his destined occupation, he sold the off-road business to follow an idea for an automotive safety product he patented, manufactured, and sold through automobile parts retailers and infomercials. “I licensed my product to an auto- motive parts supplier. It was at that point [that] my wife planted the seed to finally become the artist that was within me,” he says. “She told me to paint 20 paintings and see how I liked painting every day.”
“Wonder Woman”
Mark Boomershine
“Steve McQueen GQ”
in Cartersville, GA, where it was placed on permanent exhibit in 2009. Since then, Boomershine has never put down his brush. “I consider myself a pop artist first and a figurative painter second,” he says, adding, “I think it is going in the studio, playing amazing music, and creating works that liberates the imagery inside of me.”
The sixth painting he created was of Jay Silverheels who played Tonto in the Lone Ranger, he shares. And through a connection, his work was shown to the Smithsonian Affiliated Booth Western Art Museum
@markboomershine | @theboomershines
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