Aversion to Repetition – Mark Mulroney

My parents divorced when I was seven; it was a passionless affair that resulted in two distinctly different households thousands of miles apart. My mother stayed in my hometown of Akron, Ohio, so that I could continue my education at John F. Kennedy Middle School. She worked as a bookkeeper for a chain of restaurants that specialized in salty food and Hollywood memorabilia. My father worked for a company that evaluated the mineral resources of several US territories including Saipan, the US Virgin Islands and the Palmyra Atoll.

Aversion to Repetition – Mark Mulroney

Mark Mulroney, a foot, a donut and the shame that consumes my dreams, 2007. Ink on paper, 47 inches wide by 58 inches high. Courtesy of Mixed Greens Gallery, NYC

My parents divorced when I was seven; it was a passionless affair that resulted in two distinctly different households thousands of miles apart. My mother stayed in my hometown of Akron, Ohio, so that I could continue my education at John F. Kennedy Middle School. She worked as a bookkeeper for a chain of restaurants that specialized in salty food and Hollywood memorabilia. My father worked for a company that evaluated the mineral resources of several US territories including Saipan, the US Virgin Islands and the Palmyra Atoll. Most of my childhood was spent in Akron with my mother, but, during spring break and for one month out of every summer, I would travel abroad to be with my father.  

This gave me the opportunity to experience two very different ways of living. My mother was stable and provided me with a predictable schedule and regular visits to the dentist. She instilled in me what can at times be a neurotic need for regularity. My father gave me just the opposite, an aversion to repetition. When living with him, it was not uncommon to spend one day figuring out how to remove a brown tree snake from the bathroom and then spending the next day strapped to the back of a mo-ped collecting soil samples from the other side of the island, all the while being suspiciously watched by the locals who must have thought that the site of a small boy with a shovel riding round on a mo-ped with a heavily bearded man was a bit strange.  

Growing up with both of these kinds of lifestyles—one stable, the other unpredictable—has been influential in shaping my art practice. I work steadily and with regular hours, but I do not feel bound to a single medium. For me, the idea of what to make always comes before the decision of what medium to use or how it might fit into my body of work. I imagine a project and then I assess whether or not it requires paint, collage, video or a call home to appease my mother. Lately the ideas that spur new work oscillate between my anxieties about the future, sentiments for family members and fantasies. Am I eating enough fiber? Is it okay to name a pet after a member of my family, or is that rude? If someone throws a rock through my apartment window, is it going to be my responsibility to fix it or the landlord's? What would that girl at Walgreen’s look like upside-down? The intersection of these ideas manifest themselves in such recent works as self-portrait as my grandmother with a magazine ad scotch taped to her face, or the large-scale ink drawing, the kind of girl you think about on your death bed when you should be thinking about your loved ones instead. In describing how I work and what has influenced my practice, I think I should mention that although there are conceptual or psychological links between my works, the obvious formal cues that are often expected to carry a viewer from one painting or photo or sculpture to the next, are not always present. It is my hope that viewers will enjoy the mysteriousness of how the works play off one another.

Here is a poem written by my four-year-old nephew Cyrus, it sums up my life more directly than the story above: