Artist In Conversation: Mark Cazalet talks with Professor Frances Spalding

Thu 25 February 2021

Zoom

At a time when travel is prohibited and Wanderlust denied, come and hear Mark Cazalet talk about how places have shaped his art. When Clare Hall offered him an exhibition (now delayed until more propitious times) he had just returned from a residency in Japan, where he spent much of his time visiting Zen gardens. A Japanese monk, noticing his studies on paper of rocks, stream, gravel and plants, advised him not to become obsessed with detail but to meditate on the garden: ‘When you go away from that garden you carry that model of our garden with you…and you can re-enter it.’ This is heartening for those of us stuck in lockdown, and there is much else about Mark’s travels, not least his eighteen months in India on a Commonwealth Universities Scholarship, that is surprising and uplifting. He has held a number of residencies, and in 2012 and 2013 was artist-in-residence twice at The Anni and Josef Albers Foundation in Connecticut, America.

Mark has garnered acclaim not only through his exhibitions but also through major church and cathedral commissions, which included his towering Tree of Life at Chelmsford, and two etched and engraved-glass windows for Wesley’s Chapel, in City Road, London. Mark is a Senior Member of Faculty at The Royal Drawing School and also teaches at West Dean College, The Edward James Foundation, Sussex.

Cost: Free