Photo credit: Talitha Puri Negri |
Mark Lecchini
'Meditations' ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY Mark Lecchini was born in 1963 in Manchester, England to a Czech mother and Italian father. His early interest in art and architecture developed during his family holidays in Italy where his father introduced him to his classical Italian heritage. He was torn between choosing Fine Art or Architecture at college. He eventually decided on reading Architecture and during his penultimate year at Canterbury Art college he won joint first prize in the annual RIBA International Student Architecture Competition. He worked for eight years in London before leaving Norman Foster and Partners to move ‘home’ to East Africa … where his parents were born and raised. For many years Mark painted for himself and sold paintings privately to his architectural clients who lived in his houses. In 2020, during covid, he was invited to donate a painting to a group exhibition ‘Artists Against Hunger’. This subsequently led to a solo show at One Off Contemporary Art Gallery in 2021 where his paintings were bought by collectors in Africa, India, Europe and the United States. This is his second solo show with One Off Contemporary Art Gallery. |
MEDITATIONS
I am happiest in the wild. I like to listen to nature’s music with my eyes closed: crashing waves, birdsong, the wind in the long grass and the babble of a stream.
In my studio I substitute nature’s music with man’s music. I enjoy the mathematics of jazz where improvisation is built upon cycles of scale progressions … organised chaos … it’s unprepared like nature. But it is the duality of music that really fascinates and resonates with me. In ‘Kind of Blue’, Miles Davis’s horn flirts with Adderley’s alto and Coltrain’s tenor. There is no meaning, or judgement, or a need for explanations. It is abstract. The encounter, nevertheless, is loaded, emotional and speaks volumes.
I try to look with my eyes in the same way as I listen to music. I remove logic and rationalisation from the equation. I clear my mind and what remains is abstraction as a condition.
And it is these abstractions that are the inspiration in my paintings and I refer to them as my ‘meditations’.
Mark Lecchini - Nairobi - 2023
I am happiest in the wild. I like to listen to nature’s music with my eyes closed: crashing waves, birdsong, the wind in the long grass and the babble of a stream.
In my studio I substitute nature’s music with man’s music. I enjoy the mathematics of jazz where improvisation is built upon cycles of scale progressions … organised chaos … it’s unprepared like nature. But it is the duality of music that really fascinates and resonates with me. In ‘Kind of Blue’, Miles Davis’s horn flirts with Adderley’s alto and Coltrain’s tenor. There is no meaning, or judgement, or a need for explanations. It is abstract. The encounter, nevertheless, is loaded, emotional and speaks volumes.
I try to look with my eyes in the same way as I listen to music. I remove logic and rationalisation from the equation. I clear my mind and what remains is abstraction as a condition.
And it is these abstractions that are the inspiration in my paintings and I refer to them as my ‘meditations’.
Mark Lecchini - Nairobi - 2023
