Mark Adams, born and raised in Joe Batt’s Arm, Newfoundland and Labrador, first took painting on as a mild hobby and had always enjoyed drawing and sketching in grade school. He had meet New Brunswick artist, Dale Carruthers, in the summer of 2003, where an extensive collection of fine works impressed and inspired him.

Over the course of the fall, Mark began doing small-sized acrylic paintings and working up to his first portfolio of painted works, now known as the “First Steps” collection. His work began getting attention in his local community, while Mark would continue to create pieces for the building of his own collections.  The launch of Mark’s first art related website in March 2004 (www.geocities.com/mdadams2000) made visitors from near the community and far take a look at his works. The site also gave people the chance to make Email orders for prints and commissioned artwork pieces. It was by the end of May 2004 when Mark had decided to make a whole collection of home-directed works on paper.

With that, the “2004 Summer Festival” collection commenced. Being well acclaimed locally, the collection had been well into the word of mouth and Mark’s individual and independently made prints proved to be well sought after. In August 2004, Joe Batt’s Arm’s Wall Works Company heard word of the prints and paintings, which led to a full stock of custom-framed prints from the collection.  This made for a business partnership between Mark and Wall Works that is still strong today.

In March 2005, the Downhomer Magazine (now titled Downhome) featured a painting called “Emberley’s Stage” from the 2004 Summer festival collection. It was featured as their monthly “guest gallery” feature. In April of the same year, Mark completed his first self-published children’s book, entitled “Peter The Team Member”, featuring 17 acrylic illustrations by the artist. The book has yet to be mass produced in book publishing.

In May of 2005, around the time of his high school graduation, Mark was featured in an article from the Fogo Island Flame, a page sized feature journaling his career and passion for making art. Also, Mark was award the top prize in a School District wide competition in the Arts with a drawing of a Nigerian aboriginal woman. The drawing is now on display at the school district’s office in the town of Gander.

After many different types and collections were done in exploration, Mark started the “2005 Fogo Island” Collection in June 2005. The series would be a follow-up to the “2004 Fogo Island” Collection, but would fall short of pieces in amount, having only 6 paintings, compared to the even 10 in the former. Nevertheless, the works went to become as well acclaimed as his original set.

 In August of 2005, Mark, while working with the town council for his summer job, created two brochures for his hometown of Joe Batt’s Arm. One of the brochures are for the annual Etheridge’s Point Seaside Fest, while the other is used in promoting the town as a whole. This shows Mark’s Growing interest in the field of graphic design. Also, in the same month, Mark designed and created his current website (www.markadamsart.com), which is still in operation today. Since 2004, Mark’s online presence has bought well over 2400+ visitors between the two domains.

In September 2005, while in attendance with the University of New Brunswick, Mark had picked up the use of oil paints, a change from his ways with acrylic. Some of Mark’s first works with oil are seen in the 2005 “Truly” collection.  In November of the same year, Mark starred in an Artzone & Theatre UNB student written performance of Le Cabaret Rouge. The November 18^th event featured an evening of performance in drama, music and poetry readings. Mark had starred as Johnny Medici, a lead gangster in the story. The piece “Jacques Rouge” from the “Truly” collection features the dead character from this performance.

Also, in November 2005, Mark began his first collection of viewable photography with the {Stills} project, an extension to his site that allowed users to view some of Mark’s Photography, mostly showing pictures from Fredericton, New Brunswick. Also, Mark joined up with the UNBF student newspaper, the Brunswickan, as a voluntary staff writer for the Arts & Entertainment section.

In January 2006, Mark, along with 7 other delegates from The Brunswickan, attended CUP’s (Canadian University Press) annual national conference, entitled SPIN!, held in Toronto, Ontario. In the same month, Mark extended his interests into music broadcasting by creating Nightvision, a weekly 2 hour dance/electronica music show on CHSR FM.  The show ran for 13 weeks until it’s halt in April of that year.  

In March 2006, an original set of paintings by Mark Adams was featured in the UNB Artzone spring show entitled “Inverses”. The opening event, held on the 17^th of March, featured performances by break-dancing group The Battledudes and 9 volt Sound System, as well as gallery installed works by the artzone student collective. Mark’s works, entitled “Opposition/Integration”, were featured amongst other works in a collection that was well received by visitors and critics.

In the same month, Mark released his first musical effort, Remnants (On the 909), as an album. The album began in October 2005 as a musical collection of instrumental dance, techno and ambient music recorded from Mark’s work with a Roland MC-909. It’s been released independently though Mark himself, but has no formal recording publishing behind it. Overall, the album has received good praise for its evocative style and good production merit for independent dance music. Mark as also directed and produced the album’s artwork.

In May of 2006, after a month of being back in his hometown of Joe Batt’s Arm, Mark began his biggest art collection to date. The “Back Home – the paintings, sketches + photos” consists of 36 pieces of artwork with equal amounts in paintings, drawings and photography. The collection is strongly based on more scenic and symbolic views of his Hometown of Joe Batt’s Arm. In June 2006, Mark opened up his first online store through eBay, entitled “MARKADAMS art – Prints and Originals”.

June also saw the release of the new Fogo Island Flame cover, which Mark had designed. The cover, along with a change in the back cover, was a simple revision of the old Flame's look. Carol Penton, the editor of the Flame, as received the change well and it has gotten great acclaim from her readers.

With admission into the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in September 2006, Mark released the "Relentless" collection of paintings. While of various themes, Mark has said that the title of the collection "represents my drive, at this time, to be more relentless with promotion and finding where my work fits in the world." November 2006 saw the creation of the poster for Theatre Grenfell's stage production of Nicholas Nickleby, Parts 1 and 2, of which Mark had designed.

Into the Winter of 2007, Mark released "Embrace catastrophe", a collection of darker, two-to-three tonal paintings with stark, perplex images. A practice of working more tonally is seen with the release of "Foward to Folklore", another painting collection released in March of 2007. Mark also made work in Digital and video art, creating {Stills} (2), a website branch for digitally manipulated images (Much like {stills} showing original photography) and "Target Audience (parts 1 & 2)" respectively.

In April 2007, Mark selected and exhibited 4 recent works in Oil and Mixed media into "123ART!", the SWGC Art Gallery Student Exhibition. In May 2007, he became a curator/gallery assistant and representing artist at the Ewing Gallery, located at the Glynmill Inn in Corner Brook.

Mark Adams currently resides in Corner Brook, NL, while studying Visual Arts at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College.