Mark Bangerter: Finding His Vision after Tragedy

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By Mary Dickson, Salt Lake City, Utah
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In a case of mistaken identity, a stranger, consumed by an irrational hatred, found his target on an April evening in 1998 in a Boise, Idaho club. Mark Bangerter – an artist on his way to becoming one of America’s finest modern painters -- hugged a friend goodbye as he left the Boise club. It was a simple gesture of friendship that enraged the stranger.

Mark Bangerter photos by Brad Talbutt

A decade after the attack and a series of reconstructive surgeries, Bangerter is finding his artistic voice again with a series of watercolors he painted while on the road between Boise and Southern Utah.

He doesn’t dwell on the 1998 tragedy, referring to it in understated fashion as "an unlucky encounter." "When the doctor told me I was blind in one eye and may lose the sight in the other eye, the first thing I thought was, ‘Damn it to hell. I’m going to have to learn Braille, because if I can’t be a painter, I can be a writer.’ That was my approach to it. I’m not a sentimental dude. I don’t dwell on things, I go forward."

At the time of the attack, Bangerter had just returned from traveling and painting abroad where he had exhibits in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, Pottsdam.

"He took years to get to the level he was at, " says Paul Bingham, who owns an upscale gallery in Mt. Carmel, Utah, a place known as Maynard Dixon country that has become a mecca for serious Western artists. "He had a masters of Fine Arts degree, instructorships at Southern Utah University and Weber State University—all the things artists do as they grind to get to themselves to a level of art where the world begins to recognize them."

Bangerter’s early works, mostly large scale oils, were often derivative of Edward Hopper. Women sitting in rooms isolated from those they shared the scene with. His works also drew comparisons to George Tooker and Utah painter George Dibble, a protégé of John Marin.

Primarily a portrait painter, Bangerter painted strictly on location from the figure. His brushstroke was meticulous, his colors muted. He considers the 8 feet by 12 feet "God and the Angel" one of his best oils. In it, two men in suits stand near elevators looking away as two men, posed almost like dancers, look toward a figure hanging from the ceiling. "The Black Comet, " a pentimento, is one of his favorite pieces. Over time, the top layer of paint will fade to reveal the black comet underneath.

When Bangerter decided it was time to change direction and paint from the mind, he left the U.S. for Russia and Eastern Europe. He took with him only one bag, leaving behind his artwork and any photographs of it. He was ready to embark on an entirely new direction. His works became more bleak and solitaire, most of the colors dropped out of his palette "People called it my Russian period," he says. "By the end of it, things were pretty grey."

His life entered a true grey period after he returned to Boise, where he had lived on and off, and became the victim of a vicious hate crime. Convinced he would have to abandon painting because of his compromised vision, he decided to turn to filmmaking for a while. " I figured that the camera has one eye. I have one eye. We might be good friends," he says. He made several short black and white films, works that were, by his own description, "very dark, nihilistic." One he titled "A Suicide."

His decade-long hiatus from the medium he loved ended about a year ago. "I spent seven years getting used to having only one eye and I thought maybe what I ought to do is paint again," he says. "For some reason I knew I could paint, so I went at it. The big problem I have is not that I have one eye. It’s that I have one life. I got to the point where I had to start speaking, just speak from my heart with my painting. So that’s where I am now."

He has switched media to watercolor and his work has become more abstract, two dimensional and more compositional with strong colors. When he wants to paint, he gets in his travel trailer with his dog, and takes to the road. Watercolor trips have taken him up and down the Oregon Coast, to the Tetons, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Southern Utah Escalante, Torrey, and Boulder, back through the vermillion cliffs and into Page, Arizona.

While he paints on location, he’s not a slave to the landscape. Rather, he is responding to it. The landscape is simply a tool of motivation. When he paints, he is prolific, almost as if making up for lost time. During his last month-long trip he painted 40 watercolors.

"All my paintings are of the landscape, " he says. "I’m trying to put little figures in all of them. Just little symbols. I’m doing a lot of wet into wet on my watercolors. I stretch my paper. I’ve jumped up to full sheets because they’re much more responsive. You have to work with the watercolor a lot more, because watercolor dictates. I’m painting a painting and my painting is also painting a painting and it’s my painting, but we’re kind of working together."

His approach has become more sparse. "I used to take a pencil and sketch out my compositions. Now I just start with a two-inch brush and draw and paint in a stroke, I suppose. They’re responsive."

His work evolved to another level last spring while on a watercolor trip in Southern Utah. He heard about mountains that were "absolutely purple." To get there, he drove through Mount Carmel, Utah past the Bingham Gallery. "I thought, ‘someone sure has a fancy gallery,’" he recalls. "I kept driving. Then I decided to turn around."

That’s when he met Paul Bingham, the gallery owner. "I saw him talking to some customers and said, ‘Hey, are you looking for more artists?’ Paul said, ‘I only carry the best,’ and I said, ‘Well you’re talking to the best.’ He asked me if I had any work, so I took him out to the trailer, pulled out a couple of paintings I’d just done and he said ‘Let’s sit down and talk.’"

Says Bingham of that first meeting, "I saw composition and structure in this work that looked extremely important and unique. That’s the goal of all artists -- to find their own voice and a voice that is strong. Mark showed me 20 or 30 pieces he’d done. I told him to park the trailer behind the Maynard Dixon House and work for a week. I told him to go out and work really hard to bring himself to another level, to get the three-dimension back into his vision, and to work faster and bigger. "

Bangerter returned with a portfolio of 30 or 40 full sheet watercolors. "They were vast compositions simply executed with great power," says Bingham. "Sweeping brush strokes with large brushes – wet into wet. They are powerful compositions, speaking loudly about the landscape and the beauty of the region. I saw what he’d done and thought, ‘He’s back. He’s found it. He’s better than he was before. He has found his own voice.’"

More importantly, a decade after the tragic hate crime, he has found his vision.

"You can find people who make art to get over a tragedy," says Bingham. "That’s not the story. His art holds up. He has created an astounding body of work."

In Bangerter, Bingham sees a major artist with a major future. The public and the art world will have a chance to judge for themselves at Bangerter’s one-man show this winter. The exhibit, featuring 20 to 30 of his works from the last six months, opens January 17 at the Thunderbird Foundation for the Arts, 2200 South State Street in Mount Carmel. An artist’s reception is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. on opening night.

See available artwork by Mark Bangerter in the Thunderbird Foundation Store.