Mark Rae creates expansive abstract paintings that are designed to take up the viewer’s field of vision and invoke the experience of pareidolia: the tendency of humans to see faces, objects or meaning where there is none.

The title of each painting, a combination of anagrams and cryptic statements, gives clues to Rae’s diverse preoccupations: from ancient history, philosophy, religion, quantum physics and biological processes to the cryptography of John Dee and Francis Bacon.

image: Mark Rae, In the Eye of the Tempest… Unable to Build or Steer Your Aura, 2019,  acrylic on panel, 120 x 240 cm, photo: Daniel Kristjansson, courtesy the artist