Mark Bell, Chevron (2025)

Mark Bell  
Chevron
2025
oil on board  
8 x 6 inches
 
 
"This series of small-scale paintings evolved from my observations of the city’s peripheral areas; places where the ground is a little more fertile and nature can get enough of a foot hold to, if not thrive, at least survive. It is these middle grounds along the outskirts of the city that best illustrate how the patterns of nature press against the geometry of human development to create a world that is not exactly urban or rural, but a hybrid place still very much in flux. It is here that the direction of progress is unclear and for a moment it’s possible to imagine that the relentless interference of human development might have an opposite and equal force that might one day erase all these puny human traces."
--Mark Bell
 
 
Mark Bell is a Toronto-based artist who has exhibited his paintings across Canada in various artist-run centres and public galleries - including solo shows at Cambridge Galleries (2023), The Art Gallery of Ontario (2003), and Mercer Union (1999) – as well as commercial galleries, with General Hardware Contemporary (2023, 2017, 2013, 2011, 2010), Paul Petro Contemporary Art (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007) and Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (2007). In 2004 he won the Artist Grant Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. 
 
Bell is now represented in Toronto by Paul Petro Contemporary Art and has an exhibition coming up in February 2026.