MARK PETRICK
Sidewalk Poster Display, Ram Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, 1999 from the series an India -- Photographs by Mark Paul Petrick, 1998-2002, quadtone carbon pigment inkjet print, 7.5" x 7.5", 2002

Mark Petrick received his BA in Fine Art from the University of California at Berkeley (1977), where he also did Graduate Studies in Architecture & Design. He earned his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1983). He lives in Fairfield, Iowa.

About the artwork, Mark Petrick writes: I went to India to look at common things: temples and houses; people sitting, walking, working, worshipping; rivers and mountains; streets and shops; goddesses and gods; signs, pictures, and patterns; the sunrise; the places and happenings of each day; and to make pictures of them. The pictures in an India are not really the result of hard labor, but of perseverance: of walking and taking the steps to move to new places, of walking some more and continuing to look with care at the obvious...These are pictures of a loved one, India, that have been collected and choreographed to convey some sense of her complexity, dignity, charm, ordinariness, contrariness, majestic depth, and mundane squalor: the confluence of the plain, the savory, and the hard to swallow, creating the unfathomable flavor of her beauty.

Mark Petrick's website