About The Artist

Mark Cross started producing art during his childhood. After studying as an engineer, at the age of 23 he moved with his young family to his wife’s village, Liku, on the island of Niue and it was during these early years that a strong philosophic and stylistic foundation was established for his career as an artist. Due to this continued isolation, Cross has worked on the 'periphery', of the traditional art industry. 

 Cross has developed a reputation as one of the South Pacific’s leading contemporary realist painters and now divides his time between studios in Niue and New Zealand while travelling and exhibiting elsewhere.  His paintings over time have emerged from extended immersion in a small, isolated, water-bound, natural environment into a universal vision that questions the foibles of Mankind.

Elements of the New Zealand and Niue environment became the atmospheric stages for these allegorical communications although more recently he has employed similarly unique landscapes from around the world.  In their ethereal, visionary way, the works warn of the dire ecological imperatives that face both a small island and a planet. 

Mark Cross has achieved through his work a uniqueness that avoids the trappings of provincialism, so often associated with realism, and replaces it with an acutely perceptive worldview.

The artist has also supported art production in his community with the establishment of a sculpture park in the rain forest in the east of Niue. Besides painting, photography, sculpture, installation, video and writing are included in the artist's oeuvre.

 Paintings by Mark are to be found in public, private and corporate collections in Australasia, Asia, America, the Middle East and Europe.

www.markcross.nu