About Mark
Artist’s bio
Mark Siddall has always seen those things that the rest of the world walks on past.
The thrush in the willows, the split in the sidewalk, the longing in the eye. Even from childhood, he regarded his surroundings as a rich canvas of experience, constantly evolving and begging to be remembered. First with a paintbrush and later with a camera, Siddall obliged.
Born and raised in Port Colborne, Ont., Siddall has always been attracted to natural beauty. Through his life, he has cultivated his love for art with the entire Niagara region as his subject. Siddall, who would go on to study business, computer programming, English and fine art in college, has sold his work to a number of private collectors, and his art adorns the walls of the Port Colborne General Hospital.
Siddall’s latest venture is an art gallery, Mark Siddall Gallery, a solo exhibition space in Toronto that’s part of the Maask Group.
In addition to providing the artistic content for the regular rotation of shows erected at the gallery, Siddall offers a variety of photographic services to the outside world—both consumer and professional. His printing services, carried out on the very latest in high-end printing equipment, include digital production colour and giclée fine art prints, fine art photo prints, and canvas and premium inkjet prints. On the commercial front, Siddall’s short-run full-colour printing arm turns out business cards, catalogues, postcards, calendars, flyers, manuals, newsletters, reports, sell sheets and more.
The gallery also offers a full complement of graphic services, and has the professional staff to take an inspired commercial concept—flyers, business cards, brochures, etc.—to handsome finished product.
Most recently, Siddall has mastered the highly specialized art of framing, and he now offers museum-quality custom framing services at his gallery under the Wake UP the Walls banner. Drawing from an oeuvre of more than 700 simple and elegant museum-quality frames and mats, Siddall employs premium materials and demanding production standards to build the frames that will encase other people’s masterpieces.
Today, Mark Siddall’s documented efforts to remember the splendour in which we mutually exist is a gift for the rest of us. Through his art, we’re treated to a unique second glimpse of a first impression.
Artist Statement
Photography, for me, is a means to an end. When a visual something snags my artist’s eye, I’m compelled to satisfy a need to capture it with my camera. My profession offers me that indulgence: the ability to visually document those encounters with people, places and things that so charm me that I’m reluctant to let their memories scatter to the ether. By recording them, I arrest their reality and consign them to a place of historical relevance. Photography, for me, guarantees continued existence for those elements of the world that are magical to me, no matter their fate.
Mark Siddall Gallery