A long time: Marc Ross at work

Mark Ross, No explanation needed installed at the Cultural Arts Center, August 2015

The Columbus Cultural Arts Center looked like the inside of a jewelry box when I visited the Marc Ross painting show, which closed on August 29th. The space was perfect for displaying large-scale, luminous paintings dominated by unique colors. Each had room to breathe and room to shine, for Ross's painting both, like living organisms.


What is the difference between something alive and something that is not? that is a Sesame Street concept, isn't it, a fundamental distinction that we learn in our early years? The paintings fall into the inanimate category, despite the metaphors any art writer or gallery-goer might fabricate. But Marc Ross's work does invite a serious reconsideration of the space between animate and inanimate in art.

Mark Ross, Memory #1, 62 x 84.” Acrylic, pastel, colored pencils.

In the gallery conversation that closed this show, No explanation needed, the artist confessed to me that he hates giving lectures because he has very little to say. He was relieved of the need to speak out by asking questions from his audience, which revealed much.

Mark Ross, Memory #1, Detail.

The most important thing that Ross told us is that each of these works takes a long time to complete, and that completion is marked in a simple and practical way: It is done when he sees that he has nothing more to add.


On our close inspection, it becomes clear how much he has gone to create deceptively simple works. In this detail of Memory #1, one sees the infinite variety of vertical and superficial striations. We note that the line drawn in the painting reveals that the surface color is at the top of a deep history – an archeology – of decisions, of which we only know that Ross changed the colors many times. Only he knows what else has happened and what has been purged from this surface throughout his long process of becoming what he has decided he ends up with.


For Ross, the importance and pleasure of painting is the process. He has a large studio in the house he shares with his wife. But even that is strictly prohibited when he is working, because his concentration is too intense.

Mark Ross, Make me so happy, 68×60.”

However, when he tries to explain what he he does in the studio, you wouldn't be wrong to describe the process as a game. Although his time is strictly guarded, he's not exactly focused – he doesn't know what's going to happen and has no strategy. The process is to see what I can to happen; allow yourself the time, space and mental emptiness to be relaxed and receptive.


Isn't this the state of a child, who can make something out of nothing at any time, generating great ideas as easily as a swallow flies, whose imagination is as vital an organ as his lungs?


What this artist does is invisible to us because all the months he spends in the studio are efforts that are painted. Your work is constantly deleted, and is only allowed once. If we consider the view that our bodies continually replace themselves as cells die and break down, Ross's paintings are self-renewing bodies, but without loss of material. They accumulate their stories, getting heavier and thicker with each application of material.

Mark Ross, Make me so happy, Detail showing surface drawing

As we often imagine the artistic purpose, during his abduction the artist will be focused on his subject or passion. This could be advancing a dream, resolving a personal anguish, or supporting a social or political cause in the world. We're a little disheartened to hear Ross tell us he's not thinking about anything in particular while he works.


My point is that there is never any way of knowing what is going on in an artist's mind while they are working. “Big” or “ordinary” thoughts? Who should judge? After all, who cares? What Ross put into these paintings that we can see and experience as viewers is Time.


Marc Ross is a contemplative artist, a type of artist for whom there cannot be enough respect. Knowing that we only see the final stages of work done over months should slow our breathing and tell us to pause before any of this work. A show like No explanation needed it is, in fact, an embarrassment of riches – almost too much so – as every painting calls to us, and each one should demand hours of contemplation.


The surfaces of these works are stories of what the artist lived and buried; they are stories inscribed with organized—if unarticulated—conclusions based on experience. These results, present on the surface, satisfy the artist who believes he does not need to explain them or himself. Let us accept them for the beauty, interest, silliness, or meaning we find or attribute in exploring them. The artist doesn't say what's there; the artist doesn't tell us what he thought: as Ross says, he may not even know. The important thing is that The expenditure of time is inherent to work, and now it is up to us to contemplate.

Mark Ross, Epiphany, 72 x 41″, acrylic, pastel, colored pencils.

These paintings are steeped in the hundreds of studio hours Ross spent looking at and interacting with these surfaces, making strategic and spontaneous decisions about what he could do with them. These decisions are eccentric as far as we know or care: whether he follows academic, industrial, or daycare procedures doesn't matter what we see, except insofar as he wants to reveal them.


Ross's paintings document the value of time spent on oneself; of being free and choosing awareness over oblivion; of routine experimentation (without promised results) as sufficient to make private sense, whether the cosmos provides it or not. They suggest that beauty can emerge – and shine – from months and months of uninspired, quietly performed efforts. We see how order and vision silently impose themselves upon patient periods of trials and tests without capitalist ends. We consider that working for our own ends and understanding can create beauty and satisfaction.


The story of the artist's time, patience and thoughts inscribed in this work of art are presented to us in a very direct way. If we commit to listening and looking, communication is as immediate as conversation without the small talk—surprisingly familiar and mentally and physically freeing. If we spend a little time, it will generate more for us. The time spent observing creates in the observer much more than it takes, bringing us time and space and forgotten, if not new, views.


Will artistic creativity always produce something new, fresh or “meaningful”? Sometimes the artist gives us something as old as the earth and human nature, reminding us of our need for silence, for fallow times, for big questions or contemplation of the inner as opposed to social landscape.


Ross paints in a questioning vein that stands out in a busy, selfish world. His slow, quiet work is refreshingly full of life and deep conversation. However No explanation needed is closed, expect more work from Ross in the coming months at Ohio University's Chillicothe branch, Bennett Hall Gallery (September-October); And in “Inaugural Jury Exhibition” at Galeria Riffe, from November 2015 to January 10, 2016.

Mark Ross, No explanation needed installed at the Cultural Arts Center, summer 2015.

Photographs courtesy of Marc Ross