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| The New Firehouse, oil on canvas, 11"H x 14"W |
Hemleben says he wanted to be an artist from the time he was a child in Lafayette, Louisiana, about the age of his 8-year-old son. He went on to study fine art and history at the University of Louisiana and earned a degree in teaching. His father and grandfather both were educators, and Hemleben says he could have taught if he were so inclined. He did some substitute teaching, but it was art and the prospect of becoming a landscape painter that excited him.
Hemleben began pursuing his loose Impressionistic style in earnest while living in Southern California. “I starved in L.A. for years,” he admits. Things got somewhat better economically when he joined an artist colony in Orange County, California. As he worked on his own fine art, he, like others in the group, earned money painting murals for a variety of sources, including restaurants and a major department store chain. Smiling, he remembers painting scenery for a runway fashion show of designer clothes. “All of the work as an artist was just fantastic for my development,” he reflects.
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Photos - Clockwise from top left: Bright blooms in a simple jar become the subject for Wildflowers, oil on canvas, 10"H x 8"W. • The artist, who uses only a few paint colors, mixes multiple hues with his palette knife. • Wildflowers and Irises, oil on canvas, 48"H x 67"W • Cliffs of the Grand Canyon are reflected in the Colorado River in this detail of a larger work by Mark Hemleben. • A palette knife and a finger serve as tools of the artist’s trade. • A red-roofed steeple graces this Jerome-area church in a 12"H x 16"W oil painting titled The Church.
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Well-traveled, Hemleben has also set up his easel on the streets of European cities and has painted memorable scenes. Recently, he took a trip back home to Louisiana and positioned his easel in New Orleans’ Jackson Square, in the French Quarter, to secure a memory for himself of a church there. He had been a “street painter” in the French Quarter for about 10 years, both before and after he served in the Marines, he recounts.
Wherever he paints, the joy Hemleben gets from being creative is “like going fishing,” he muses. “It’s very therapeutic. I’m trying to carry that feeling to people who put my plein-air paintings in their living rooms.”
Hemleben will be taking part in the 6th-Annual Sedona Plein Air Festival. The free public event takes place Oct. 23-30.