The sensitive outlook of Mark Ryan Chariker

Mark Ryan Chariker is one of a kind amongst emerging American painters. Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina in 1984, Chariker grew up in a place where the natural world was always close by. However, it wasn’t until years later, while living in Brooklyn, New York, and reflecting on the disconnection of modern life, that he began painting nature not just as a scenery, but as a metaphor. Before that, however, the painter went through many stages of production.

Chariker earned his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in Boston, a time when he experimented widely—dabbling in collage, digital abstraction, even pieces that flirted with the aesthetic of anime and pop art. In the mid-2000s, some of his works could have even passed for a lost Roy Lichtenstein storyboard. They were graphic, sharp, and ironic—far from the brooding atmospheres he conjures up now.

"13 AM" (2020), Oil on canvas

From 2011, the artist then went through a transitional phase, as he began painting clouds. Just clouds—big, patient, ambiguous skies rendered in oil. These weren’t decorative studies, but quiet revolutions. The perspective often suggested someone lying on their back, watching the sky shift— inviting the viewer to slow down, look up, and feel small. It was a turning point: he was moving away from visual punchlines, toward mood and mystery. These studies retained the almost abstract aspect that characterized his earlier work but marked a clear shift toward a more classical approach to painting. Indeed, if these works played with a tension between figuration and abstraction, they were still treating pictorial elements in a significantly more naturalistic way. From then on, Mark Ryan Chariker gradually began using oil painting to explore landscapes and figures rendered in precise color combinations. From 2014 to 2017, the artist leaned heavily into pastoral painting—figures in open, timeless spaces, sometimes referencing Flemish landscapes or the soft excesses of Rococo art. He was looking to the old masters but also evidently trying to find his own place in that lineage. His characters became more thoughtful, suspended between eras, between solitude and communion.

In 2022, just after the lockdown period due to the covid pandemic, Chariker's had a solo show at 1969 Gallery in New York entitled All the Time in the World, which was a first statement of artistic maturity The title alone captured a kind of post-pandemic disorientation, a sense of both endless time and none at all. The figures in these paintings stood quietly amid overgrown, almost mythical landscapes, or alternatively private interior spaces. They weren’t lost, but they weren’t entirely sure where they were either. In several pieces of that time, even when the artist depicts a group of people together, they seem to be all in their own headspace, as if listening for a sound the viewer can’t hear. The show captured the moment perfectly: a world reopening slowly, with uncertainty hanging in the trees.

"Intermission" (2022), Oil on canvas

"A Certain Silence" (2022), Oil on canvas

By the time Chariker’s 2024 solo-exhibition The Forest Through the Trees opened—again at 1969 Gallery—, the painter had fully embraced his newly found style of contemplative painting in a reduced palette of ochres, umber and sienna. The title riffed on the familiar phrase “you can’t see the forest for the trees”, turning it into a quiet rebuke of modern life's pace and tunnel vision. These new works were about not missing the bigger picture—the spiritual, emotional, and existential depth that hides behind all the noise. They were suggesting another path between the trees: one opposite to contemporary obsessions with speed, material wealth, and individuality. The artist’s response was to embrace slowness and a deeper sense of connection: through the tactile nature of painting and an appreciation for process, but also an expression of his own subtle psychological states echoing those of the viewers.

"Almost There" (2024), Oil on linen

As for the artist’s career, it is developing at a steady, regular pace. Chariker is currently represented by 1969 Gallery and his work has already been featured in several significant exhibitions and fairs, including Platform at David Zwirner Gallery (New York) in 2021, The Armory Show in New York in 2022, as well as Dallas Art Fair and Untitled (Miami Beach) in 2023. More recently, he had a solo show at Unit London in 2025. The painter has also participated in multiple artist residencies over the years: at PM/AM Gallery in London, the RAiR Foundation in Roswell, New Mexico, as well as SÍM in Reykjavik and NES in Skagaströnd, Iceland. Last but not least, his works are already part of major collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, the Center of International Contemporary Art in Vancouver, and Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in New York and Paris.