Via Fecal Face: Hailing from Montreal, Canada, Marc Bell’s work is constantly negotiating between disparate influences including comics, folk art, popular culture and Fine Art. Embedded in his drawings is complex and layered wordplay that allude to these influences while remaining deeply funny. Bell’s works vary from pen and ink drawings coloured with subtle watercolors, to comics, to elaborate mixed media cardboard constructions, and, put all together for the first time in HOT POTATOE, provide a comprehensive portrait of a multi-talented and influential contemporary artist.
Regarding his process, Marc responded: That depends what kind of piece I am working on. If I am working on a watercoloured drawing it is fairly straightforward. I could explain further if you like (the specifics) but they are essentially that (an ink drawing that is watercoloured). My mixed media pieces are a little different/more involved in that they can go through all sorts of changes. I have a couple boxes of “scrap” material that I go through to select things to get the image going. The scraps are usually old drawing scraps of mine or paper I find interesting. Sometimes they are actually half-finished works or pieces of pieces that didn’t work out that I decided might be better composed into something new later on. Anyway, so I gather some things and begin and see how it goes. In some cases I will compose one of these works and work on it over a long period of time and then decide I am not happy with it and then cut it up and it ends up being used to create several new pieces. For example: recently I was working on a 20″ x 15″ piece and decided it just wasn’t working and so that was cut down into three stand alone pieces and there were several other parts were leftover and these elements were integrated into (I think) three other works. So I like it to be changing and shifting in an attempt to keep myself engaged. Sometimes these things just become uninteresting to me and something must be done about it.
