Adept at using the Impasto technique, Jade van der Mark, plays with multi layered oil painting to sculpt the pictorial material. With thick brushstrokes and a heritage which navigates between the European influences of Abstract expressionism to the CoBra art movement, she plays with dimensions and breaks the ethos of perspective allowing the eye to wander from detail to detail in a mesmerizing manner.

The Dutch artist’s vivid palette is at the core of her idiosyncratic tactile vulnerability. It allows her to portray a wide range of emotional and psychological reactions, while evoking the coexistence of contradictory yet ambivalent feelings and attitudes.

Her latest series of work emulates the full depth of urban caricatures while screaming the artist’s love for Fashion. The artist draws from her past life working within that industry to create compositions that are ironically reminiscent of both editorial fashion magazines and high fashion storefronts.

The series reflects on ethical fashion initiatives, on the impact high fashion has on society and its way to shape the notion of self. It discredits hypocritical behaviors within the luxury industry in a way which is very evocative of the editorial wit of Franca Sozzani.

This series raises awareness on how brands sometimes use consumerism through the lens of social media and marketing campaign to shape the notion of selfhood and upset the fine balance of the Superego. That which draws our morals and hands out to the self, mental welfare.

Cathartic, her work’s research embodies the wise words of Cindy Sherman “I wish
I could treat every day as Halloween, and get dressed up and go out into the world as some eccentric character.” To that extent, she nourishes her creative process by playing with the codes of identity fashioning and gender identification while encompassing Virgil Abloh’s quest for challenging obsolete thoughts process.

The fashion designer constitutes a major influence in the artist’s work, in that she similarly defies preconceptions and explore interdisciplinary waters where art, fashion and cultures collide. Her taste for set scenery and acute attention to details, on another hand, comes from a close study of Wes Anderson’s esthetics and narrative.

Due to their synesthetic nature of evoking all senses, the pieces from this series embody real Zeitgeists. They all evoke different settings, scents, lightnings, and background music. This is due to the different genres of music that the artist listens to while painting, such a rap, jazz and classical, which allow her to dig into the deepest part of her subconscious. This gives to her pieces an underlying narrative: the viewer ventures where they would imagine seeing the type of ad or scenery represented, mirroring the artist’s quest for depicting selfhood.