Mark Heggie

No one is about to ask Mark Heggie to forsake his singular and successful vocation as one of Detroit's most talented tattoo artists, but among his legion of admirers are many who would dearly love to see more paintings by this talented man. This early piece, for instance, has all the hallmarks associated both with Heggie's creative skill and the delight he takes in the careful placement of symbolic or deliberately cryptic images.

An artist, his back turned to the viewer and his head obscured by a nimbus of thought, examines either his own visage in a mirror or a portrait of someone else. The latter possibility seems to carry more weight - especially since another partially obscured face seems to be present here. Note also that the object in the artist's right hand COULD be a brush brought to a sharpened point, but its acute features give it the disturbing quality of a weapon - and a weapon pointed at what is obviously a heart. This is a canvas infused with mystery and one that a discerning eye could revel in.

Internationally recognized as an accomplished tattooist and artist, Mark Heggie transposed his singular visions from human to cotton to canvasses, creating an assemblage of paintings that art critic Robert de Valle describes as “surreal, iconic and darkly humorous.”

The vessel known as Mark Heggie manifested in 1973. Attempts at education, in a series of overcrowded learning institutions of questionable architecture and validity, proved futile and lead only to the development of the socially adroit yet misanthropic man of today.

Mark Heggie resides in his Warren, MI studio with a few spiders and a small set of amusing personal demons.