ART GALLERYG & M Design

The G&M Design gallery presents Knife Edge, Mark Evans' first exhibition in Monaco.
Mark Evans grew up on a rural farm in the Welsh mountains. At the age of 7, his grandfather gave him a small pocket knife that he used to carve pictures in trees and wood bark. This knife will influence the rest of his life. He studied Fine Arts in London at Middlesex University. He works with conventional and traditional materials such as charcoal, oils and acrylic. During the winter of 2000, while trying to clean a stain on a new leather jacket given to him at Christmas, he scratches the surface, by accident. That tiny scratch on the leather suddenly opens up a whole new world of possibilities for him.
20 years later, he works with animal skins from all over the world and engraves them by hand with dozens of different knives and scalpels. He perfected both engraving and leather tanning, which are an integral part of the overall process of the artwork. The procedure takes incredible patience and immense attention to detail, it removes less than a tenth of a millimeter from the surface of the leather, cutting through the layers of dark skin, removing just enough skin until it exhibits the different shades of lighter suede. He describes his work as a "micro-sculpture".