Mark Greenwold is an American painter, born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1942, whose subjects often include figures in psychologically charged domestic interiors, executed with pathologically laborious detail.
Though he came of age in an art world known for minimalist and conceptual trends, his work has always centered around the figure and his style has fallen somewhere between surrealism and photo realism.
He uses photography as a starting point, which includes taking source imagery from low-end interior design magazines and photographs of friends and family members.
Richard Vine, in a 1993 Art in America review, explains: “Greenwold, who acknowledges an affinity with Woody Allen, subjects a repertory cast of relatives, lovers and friends to various emotional crises, blatant or implicit, while never quite letting go of a self-deprecating humor that is his best—and perhaps only—psychological defense.” [3] When Greenwold first embarked on his painting career after grad school, he was entering an art world concerned with little else other than minimalism and conceptualism.
In 1973, Greenwold's Secret Storm was allegedly censored from publication in an exhibition catalogue for the show "12 Painters and the Human Figure" at the Santa Barbara Museum.
The exhibition at Phyllis Kind in 1979, Brown's first solo show,[7] included one single painting, Sewing Room, whose subject matter was a husband stabbing his wife with a pair of scissors.
[3] Richard Vine, writing in Art in America in 1993, explained how Greenwold's style was reminiscent of Giotto and other Sienese painters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
He stays true to the subject matter he always focused on, including interiors from architecture magazines and a depiction of the psychological landscape of dysfunctional family life.