Jade van der Mark is a self-taught contemporary figurative painter based in Paris. Known for her large-scale, impasto oil paintings - often stretching over three meters - she explores the tension between collective environments and private inner worlds. Her canvases teem with bodies: crowds in motion, strangers in passing, faces both vivid and dissolving. Yet each figure is rendered with an intimacy that invites reflection on loneliness, overconsumption, and the psychic weight of modern city life.
Van der Mark’s vibrant color palettes and heavily textured surfaces stem from a ritual of close observation. From morning walks to daily metro rides, she immerses herself in the theater of the everyday, filtering what she sees through memory, mood, and instinct. Trained in fashion before turning to painting, she brings a sharp eye for gesture and detail, weaving in visual codes of status, ego, and media influence. Her work is a response to what she calls “the strange spirit of our time” - a world shaped by image, ambition, and flattening capitalist pressure. Whether it’s a child lit by the glow of an iPad or an elderly woman navigating the street with a cane, each subject reveals something fragile and quietly human beneath the noise. “Painting is an open conversation with God,” she says. “It’s honest, immediate, and without judgment.”
Her work has been exhibited internationally in solo presentations such as Collection Jade van der Mark Spring/Summer 2024 at Galerie Michael Janssen, Berlin (2023); Empty Spaces at Ronchini Gallery, London (2022); and Share & Rule at Vroom & Varossieau, Amsterdam (2021). She has also participated in major group shows and art fairs including We’re All Human at Pi Artworks, London (2020), Art Dubai (2023), Zona Maco, Mexico City (2023), Untitled Art Fair - Miami Beach (2022), and ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair (2022).
