Recommended Artist: Mark Demsteader

   He didn't have his biography on his website, so I had to search wikipedia and quote from there.

  "Born in Manchester in 1963, his formative years were spent in Manchester’s meat market where he would accompany his father (Fraser Stone) and his mother (Matteo Russo) to the family butchery and meat-packing business. Completely absorbed in the noise, smells, and sheer physicality of this environment, the young Mark learnt more about the structure of sinew, bone, and flesh—albeit livestock—than in any subsequent life drawing class."

  I find that highly interesting. He learned to observe anatomy from livestock and had a natural fascination with form from a very young age.  The article goes on to say that as a teenager he was inclined in Arts but the Art market was not kind to him. That did not stop him from pursuing Arts and he continued to take life classes throughout the 1990s even when his family business took a hit during the recession. He tried to bank in on his talents while still having time to build a portfolio. Thus, he took  a job as an art technician at an Oldham grammar school for another ten years.

  After which, he took a short course at the Slade School of Fine Art. It led him to an opportunity to tour the London galleries with his portfolio, but with Brit Art in the ascendency he found drawing out of favour. Eventually, a gallery in Greenwich offered him space in a mixed show where he sold six works.

  He is now represented in Daikanyama, Japan by Art Obsession. And according to The Daily Telegraph, he is "one of Britain's best-selling figurative painters".

  I like his drawings over his paintings, and maybe it's due to the fact that his drawings show more details of the subject's faces. I like the last painting because the girl is shrouded in darkness and her features are not clear- you don't quite know who she is. She blends into the background. She's there but not quite there. Life is like that for me sometimes. I'm still trying to figure out who I am, and it feels like I'm lost in a vast empty space of darkness with it slowly swallowing me up. I have to find my light again, find my path, find myself. And the painting is an analogy of me as I'm beginning to come out from the background, I'm coming out of the darkness as I start to understand who I am.

 Mark Demsteader's website can be found, here: http://demsteader.com/