Mark’s current body of work, a melding of his photography and his illustrations, explores depression, isolation, and anxiety as well as finding beauty in the unwanted and discarded. He has created a fantastical world that is at the same time familiar, hauntingly beautiful, whimsical, and melancholic. His hope is that people will find some comfort in examining the darkness and that his work will help people to speak openly and honestly about their own mental health.
Throughout his life, Mark has struggled with mental illness and his illustrations can often act as a barometer of his mental health. A withdrawn period while fighting depression where little is kept and much ends up in the garbage. After the depths of depression, his work will often carry the theme of finding the light in the darkness. While struggling with anxiety he can hyperfocus on the details and create at a feverish pace.
Biography
Mark S. Gagne - Mindmelt Studio
Mark Gagne was born in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada in 1976. Always artistically inclined, he studied Fine Arts at Cambrian College. He trained in several different artistic mediums but found photography to be his greatest passion. After completing his diploma, Mark delved even more into his photographic practice, focusing on the effects of time, the abandoned, the derelict, and those things we leave behind. In the early 2010’s, he revisited illustration and found a renewed vigor for his artistic endeavors.