Mark Pulsford is a painter who uses the light of the full moon as the sole light source for creating his work.
This practice originated in rural Kent, where he used to live. There, he had a large garden with many trees, including evergreen laurel and mature ponderosa pines. One bright moonlit night he was walking home and noticed that he could see in detail the little flint-covered church and the memorial stones in the churchyard next to his garden. Was there enough light by which to draw? He went to fetch pen, ink and paper to test the question. Fourteen years later (2025), the experiments continue.
“Out of this first impulse was born the thrilling idea that an image could be made by the power of thought alone. Eventually, it was to lead me to conceive of the act of painting as a lucid dream, the concept made more compelling because of the sense of solitary communion with the moon itself. As the Buddhist monks of long ago sought the sensation (and actuality) of flying by losing awareness of their feet touching the ground, so I paint forgetful of my hand, being mindful only of the silvery visions educed by moonlight.” (Mark Pulsford)
“Art succeeds only when it communicates. Art succeeds when it makes demands of those who experience it: What do you see? What do you hear? What do you think now, that you could not have thought before? This is art. This is its purpose. Worthwhile art pushes at the limits of perception. It involves its audience’s mental energy and attains a psychic, gestalt life of its own. It can be said that because of the life of art we, in symbiosis, become more than our organic selves.
What does this say about the role of artists? The painter John Blackburn, with whom I had many conversations, said that it was the artist’s duty to bear witness fearlessly and without being crushed by the responsibility of truth. But the fellow artist with whom I began this conversation some fifty-four years ago was the man who became the great Canadian film-maker and who was then a brilliant young talent on a scholarship to the Conservatoire in Nice. This was David Cronenberg, who said that our work, if we were to take ourselves seriously and be taken seriously by others, should be a form of prayer. When work is prayer, it can only be the essence of truth. Some conversations, like some art, remain in the mind forever.” (Mark Pulsford)
PAREIDOLIAN QUEST
An excerpt from a longer film exploring creativity directed by Rod Morris for roadfactoryfilms.com
“These profound paintings reveal images within images; when we examine each one we are drawn deeper and deeper into the picture. Best seen in the half light, the forms and associations that flicker into awareness are bound to differ in each viewer, but they are there, truly there, for each one of us: capturing the mystery and sanctity of nature in moonlight; opening up for each individual an inner world dreamed, unseen, unspoken, unthought of, evoked through colour and line and connections, inspiring imaginative thought processes which seem to deny darkness, making evident moonlight’s capacity to endow the night with visual significance.”
(a revised text from Mark Pulsford’s Moonlight Paintings, a commentary by Dr Jonathan Barnes, artist and educational theorist)
K E Y T O T H E 2 5 I M A G E S S H O W N O N T H I S P A G E
(in sequence order in rows of 5, from L to R)- Der Schubertmond 219: completed on 31.01.2018, Franz Schubert’s 219th birthday, the 2nd full moon of that month. (42cm x 60cm)
- The Brilliant Orb & the Forest: February 2019 & December 2020 . (113cm x 164cm)
- Molto onorato/molto compianto: February 2021 (33cm x 43cm)
- In Time Of Dust (right-hand panel): December 2020 (98cm x 137cm)
- O Graziosa (detail): April 2021 (100cm x 111cm)
- For the Druid of Roses Farm (detail): February 2022; property of Sarah Martin (33cm x 43cm)
- The Frozen Moment (detail): February 2023 (55cm x 75cm)
- Last Spring at Paddy’s (detail): May 2019 (25cm x 34cm)
- The moon watches over the glade of the giant ape: November 2021 – March 2022 (56cm x 76cm)
- O Latest Born: March 2024 (56cm x 76cm)
- Ghost Dancers (detail): Cynthia’s garden, January 2025 (65cm x 92cm)
- Crystalline Blue (detail): February 2021 (16cm x 25cm)
- Polychrome Dance (detail): November 2022; property of Clive & Linda Gotley (45cm x 58cm)
- The metal frieze of the lost (detail): September 2016 (60cm x 90cm)
- Wild Landscape for Robert: April 2023 (35cm x 50cm)
16 – 20 Close-up details showing Pulsford’s markmaking (20 zoom-in of 19)
21 – 25 Digital records made on location, showing moonlight reflected on wet watercolour (21/22/25) and the ice crystals formed overnight in sub-zero conditions (23). No 24 is a still from a film made at Fairlight Hall, Hastings in June 2024, by kind permission of Fairlight Hall Estate.
