MARK HENTHORN is a painter with a love of nature and strong respect for light. His work depicts a mood of peace and serenity seen in the spaciousness of the Western landscape. He includes man-made structures - barns and farmhouses - in many of his paintings saying, "These elements elude to a subtle connection between man and nature and how we fit into the landscape."

The path leading to Mark's career as a painter was not a direct one. He earned a degree in architecture with a minor in art at Oklahoma State and Rice Universities and enjoyed a successful career as an award-winning architect and illustrator for twenty-seven years. Henthorn continued his art studies, continuing to create oil paintings and soon developed a following of collectors enamoured of his meditative interpretation of the western landscape. Painting from pencil and watercolor sketches made while traveling, Mark paints mainly with palette knives now. After years of brush-work, the palette knife, he believes, has freed up his work to be both representational and impressionistic. His focus is directed more toward light, color, form and mood than toward detail.

Today Mark Henthorn works in a newly acquired studio with views of the mountains he frequently paints. Though numerous paintings depict the Roaring Fork Valley where he lives, many others are scenes and subjects derived from his extensive travels.