Mark Messersmith has Solo Show in Dallas

Professor Emeritus Mark Messersmith just opened a solo show titled, “The Weight of Everything” at Valley House Gallery in Dallas. The show runs through February 27, 2021.

These painting suite was recently shown at the Amarillo Museum of Art where he had a video conversation with Dr. Amy Von Lintel facilitated by AMOA curator of Art, Alex Gregory. The conversation and virtual tour of that show can be found on their site, amoa.org/mark-messersmith.

Mark Messersmith is an artist whose work depicts the battle for habitat and survival, both between humans and animals and between the animals themselves. With his large sculptural canvases, Messersmith creates a narrative where animals, insects and plants are in constant struggle. The struggle is often with the natural cycles of life and the food chain but more noticeably against the onslaught of human expansion. His oil paintings contain a frenetic energy of flora and fauna mixed with logging trucks, oil refineries, and apocalyptic cityscapes. Messersmith is a recently retired professor of art at Florida State University, where he has taught since 1985. He has received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the State of Florida four times. He has also received two Ford Foundation Fellowships, two fellowships through the National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation award.