by Marie Monroe

Created on: November 02, 2008   Last Updated: November 03, 2008

Mark Welsh: Loving the 'Unlovable'-the Sweet Impermanence of Physicality

Scouting the nether regions of aesthetics, Mark Welsh is a collector. He retrieves, and lovingly preserves, a collection of never-seen specimens for us to inspect. Some are disturbing, but only at first. Some are whimsical, but somehow deeper than that. All are rare.

One wonders where he has gone to find his ephemeral creatures, how he made their acquaintance and why he came to love them. Skimming his collection and his writings, we find clues:

there is usually a rigid pattern performed without a conscious design in response to certain stimuli

This helps me. I begin to understand the xenophobic response that tried to pull me away as I first moved in closer to his work. I begin to understand why, once intimate with these images, I have now broken something inside me, something that has needed to be broken, something judgmental and full of limitation.

Welsh's work captures the spirit long enough to tutor it and to help it remember basics.

In this world all things are equal.

We would do well to be compassionate and to have an unconditional and loving regard.

Physicality is transient and haphazard.

Something greater is at work.

Welsh not only tempts our vision, pulling us, compelling us, but he tests his viewers, challenging the limitations of our acceptance, of our aesthetic. He engages us in an examination of conscience as we absorb his work.

Often oddly pulled, cropped, distorted and malformed, faces appear to confront us, but they are not aggressive. In fact, there is a stillness about them that reassures us that we may look as directly as we want without reprisal. The admonishment to look away from the malformed falls away. It is polite to look, even to stare, in Welsh's world. In fact, his characters expect inspection and wait serenely for it. They are not self-conscious. They wait patiently for me to resolve my own discomfort.

Somehow, these characters understand the viewer's limitations and give us time to work them out. In the end we are equals with xenophobia dissipated. These images teach us that we are similar. They take us to the physics of spirit and help us abandon the physical. This, I think, is Welsh's greatest gift to his viewers. I begin to wonder about the artist himself and look about for what might be a self-portrait and I think I find one in Aka.

Aka, the artist's chosen RedBubble icon, brings another batch of odd thoughts and feelings. This character is young and I feel protective

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