by Robert Maniscalco

What if you had all the time in the world to study and develop your artistic talent? Would you take advantage of it? That's precisely the one thing artist Mark Wolak had in abundance -- time. But time had a high cost. The price he paid was his freedom. Wolak served eight years in prison on a non-violent, drug related conviction during most of the 1990s. He's not proud of that fact but no one can say he didn't make the best of a bad situation. In prison, he began studying graphite photo-realism under Donald Gregory and color theory with Samuel Allen. "You'd be amazed at some of the talent that finds its way into prisons," says Wolak. While in prison he created over 450 abstract paintings, filling reams of blank books and canvases with ever more fully resolved images.

The abstraction he evolved came out of several years of drawing and painting realism. Eventually he began de-constructing forms; gradually Wolak departed from the representational realm into a more direct, intimate relationship with work. "I became infatuated with the paint itself." Eventually, Wolak got back to the enthusiasm for paint we all possess as a child. "Paint out of the tube is beautiful, in and of itself." So he began to paint paint instead of things. "I used to be one of those people who believed 'my kid could paint like that,'" Wolak admits. "Then I realized the level of discipline it takes to paint a good abstract. I wasted a lot of paint in the beginning until I rediscovered the pure joy of the paint itself."

Is it possible only a kid can paint like that? "There comes a point when we begin to want to draw what we see, when we start looking at what others are doing. It's a long road back to the time before, the time when we enjoyed the paint for its own visceral pleasure."

There is an apparent contradiction between the idea of freeing the inner child and the discipline of creating a sophisticated work of art. "You have to develop a trained eye," says Wolak. For him, it has involved a careful and long study of great painters. He had the luxury of studying a square inch of a Van Gogh for hours. He studied a lot out of books. "You don't often have the opportunity to see the real thing, especially in prison. For unfortunate reasons, I was in the incredible position to spend fourteen hours a day, day after day, over eight years, painting and studying."

He equates the discipline of painting to a memory he has of when he worked in a hospital as a teenager. "When I started a shift one day I noticed a doctor stooped over a microscope performing brain surgery. He was in the exact same position at the end of my shift. That's the level of discipline I'm talking about." It is the discipline of taking focused action, the commitment of being there 100%. Prison imposed that commitment upon him but he maintains a monk-like commitment to his work even now that he is free. He still manages to finds large blocks of time to continue developing his work.

Wolak achieves what he refers to as a "highly emotional state" when he paints. He uses emotional recall to trigger himself into "the zone." He uses music, scenes from movies that have touched him, anything he can think of to focus his energy into his work. He works wet-on-wet, so the painting process demands total concentration. There is an urgency. That's why he works in oil. "Acrylics are great but with the fast drying time the urgency is more frenzied and less productive." The process of painting is cathartic for Wolak. "I don't think about anything in particular once I'm into the painting. Perhaps I'm concerning myself with balancing colors and shapes, but on a very non-verbal level. The discipline is in not allowing anything to happen that would stop the flow of energy." Wolak is also a black belt in Kung fu, which has deepened his level of discipline as well as influenced the rhythm and action of his paintings.

When he approaches an abstract he immediately activates the entire canvas with wet paint, often working with light values first, unlike traditional oil painters who tend to work dark to light. Like a landscape painter, he begins with a horizon. "Of course, it's not a literal horizon." He is working within the landscape of the mind, after all. "The main thing is to not be afraid. Remember, nothing really bad can happen to you when you're painting. Getting started is the hardest part." His goal is an accurate translation of the minds eye; it is through this monistic approach that he strives to make concrete our most subtle thoughts and feelings.

As to whether his time in prison has "rehabilitated" him, Wolak responds, "fixing integrity and morals can only happen in your heart. It doesn't happen in prison. What prison did was give me a lot of time to think. If anything, my art kept me from going insane."

Mark Wolak has exhibited at the Edward Hopper Museum, the Detroit Artists Market, the Rackham Gallery and at the University of Michigan. Wolak is soon to be the featured artist at the Maniscalco Gallery in Grosse Pointe. The Mark Wolak exhibition opens September 13th and runs through November 9th, 2002.

View the works of Mark Wolak

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