About

 Mark James Murphy is an artist and printmaker. He was born in North-East England in the early 1980s. He is a self-taught linocut artist, who has an ongoing love affair with this medium.

I discovered three lonely linocutting tools in the printmaking cupboard, while doing my Fine Art Degree and decided to make good use of them. Well over a decade later, my passion for the medium has only deepened. I love the physicality of relief printing. I love creating black and white images, on strong, hessian-backed domestic linoleum. I draw out my image directly with a pencil onto the lino and always hand burnish using a wooden spoon. The labor-intensive nature of my practice, marked with daubs of black ink on the skin, is a nod to the industrial past of my region.

Mark's work is often informed by the area he came from, where he lives at present and popular culture. Check out his full portfolio here. He also reproduces his linocut designs on to walls in the form of large murals for homes and businesses.

At 27 years old Mark was given only months to live after receiving the traumatic news his heart was enlarged and he needed to undergo immediate open heart surgery if he was going to stand a chance of survival. Luckily experts at The James Cook University hospital, Middlesbrough did an amazing job of the emergency operation and Mark’s heart was mended. Being handed a new gift of life, made the artist more determined to make the most of it.

Growing increasingly disillusioned with working dead end jobs in England, he took the leap of faith and moved to Vietnam in 2017. He began supporting his art practice by teaching English as a foreign language and travelling more. In 2019 he fulfilled a childhood dream when he backpacked for two months throughout the whole of India, ending up in a remote village in the Himalayan foothills.

He has played football with local kids in the Sahara desert, lived with Hmong people high in the mountains of North Vietnam and worked as a farmhand in Southern Spain. Mark's work has featured in shows throughout the UK and Europe. He currently lives in South East Asia.