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All my work is hand-painted
the traditional way, I mainly work
in oil and acrylic paint on canvas
or sometimes board or paper for
smaller pieces. I have developed
a top secret technique to achieve
a super-smooth airbrush type
finish to my paintings.
Mark Wardel aka Trade Mark has been creating iconic pop
images since the early 1980s and is still turning out stunning
and memorable paintings much sought after here in the UK
and abroad .Born in Wallasey Merseyside he studied art in
Liverpool before re-locating to London in 1978 where he
gravitated towards the embryonic Blitz/New Romantic scene
and began painting friends and faces like Steve Strange and
Japan’s David Sylvian. Mark’s first exhibition was held at
London’s Ebury Gallery way back in 1983 and his work was
also featured on Channel 4’s pop-culture show “The Tube”.
Throughout the eighties Mark made storyboards and did art
direction for videos by artists like Bryan Ferry and Siouxsie
and the Banshees. A chance meeting with his art hero Andy
Warhol led to a request from the” Pope of Pop Art” for one
of Mark’s hand painted T-shirts which spurred him on into
resuming his painting career.
TRADEMARK ART
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In 1990 club promoter Laurence Malice approached Mark to
produce artwork & visuals for a new club project, London’s
first legal all night gay rave “Trade” at Turnmills in Clerkenwell.
Mark’s iconic artworks and disco decor helped Trade to
become a phenomenal worldwide success as well as earning
him the “Trademark” name. Commissions followed from many
of the new bars and businesses exploding into being in the
new 90’s gay Soho and Mark was soon hailed as London’s
“flyer king” by both Attitude and Time Out magazines.
Portraits, covers and commissions for Boy George, Absolut
vodka, Marc Almond and Holly Johnson followed whilst
Trademark continued to exhibit in galleries. In 2006 Mark
collaborated with William Baker, creative director for Kylie
Minogue to produce painted imagery for the packaging of
his men’s underwear range Bboy. This lead to a commission
from Kylie for a set of portraits to be used as imagery
for her Showgirl Homecoming Tour. These portraits were
exhibited at the V&A as part of the Kylie exhibition and
also at the Salford Museum and Art Gallery in the “Fellow
Travellers group show. Trademark’s artwork for Liverpool’s
anti-homophobia organization Homotopia will be shown in
the new museum due to open in Liverpool this summer.
Beige caught up with Mark recently for a chat...
I asked Mark which artists, designers and writers influence
him and why ?
T.M. As a child my imagination was caught in a big way by
the whole pop art movement. I was originally influenced by
the New York artists and illustrators of the seventies and
eighties, particularly Andy Warhol, I didn’t know then that
ART
I would meet him later and he would ark for a piece of my
artwork. Richard Bernstein who painted the all those classic
Interview covers, Stephen Sprouse and Antonio the fashion
illustrator, punk graphics, and Edward Bell who painted
the cover for Bowies’ Scary Monsters album. Actually David
Bowie has been a big influence to me since the early 70’s.
One of my most treasured possessions is a hand written letter
from him from Berlin in 1979 thanking me for an artwork I
gave him.
D.B. What are the tools of the trade? What materials do you
work with?
T.M. Many people assume my work is a computer graphic
however this is not true!
All my work is hand-painted the traditional way, I mainly
work in oil and acrylic paint on canvas or sometimes board
or paper for smaller pieces. I have developed a top secret
technique to achieve a super-smooth airbrush type finish to
my paintings.
D.B. Were you a child art star, great at art as a child?
T.M. Yes, art was the only area I could shine in at school,
I wasn’t much good at anything else. My mum died when I
was eight and I didn’t have a dad so art and drawing provided
an escape from the circumstances I found myself in.
D.B. I wonder which living person would be your dream
subject to do a portrait of if you could choose anyone?
T.M. I would really like to paint the Queen and give her the
Trademark glamour treatment!
So many portraits make her look ill and old and I could
rescue her from that. Wouldn’t it be great to have a Trademark
portrait of the Queen on a stamp?
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