New Paintings from Tattoo Artist Mark Heggie
Reception: April 17, 2010, 6 p.m. – 11 p.m.
Through May 13, 2010

New Paintings from Tattoo Artist Mark Heggie323East presents “There’s Inventions Everywhere!” a collection of paintings by tattoo visionary and artist Mark Heggie. The show opens on Saturday April 17, 2010 with an artist’s reception from 6 p.m. – 11 p.m., and runs through May 13, 2010. Both the opening reception and exhibit are free and open to the public.

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

Many of these works were born during a recent sabbatical in San Francisco, where Heggie painted constantly, even sleeping on the studio floor between bouts of inspiration. While Heggie feels these are some of his “most ambitious canvasses in over a decade,” the artist also experienced a distinct sense of rebirth. “After 100 hours, the work is still in the dawn of its life,” recalls Heggie. “As the narratives unfolded in my head, the root symbolism mutated and tugged my leash in unexpected directions. I battled the works tenaciously, never quite surrendering. I became merely a portal for its arrival.”

In honor of the exhibit, 323East is giving away a limited edition of 32 signed and numbered Giclee prints of Heggie’s “Dumb Deeds Did Indeed Do in the Dodo Breed”. The “6 x8′ print will be free to the first 32 show attendees requesting it.

“There’s Inventions Everywhere!” also marks the official launch of Heggie’s Dfiant brand, “an incursion on the fashion regime,” explains Heggie. “Dfiant.net spawned from blast furnaces deep in the bowels of Detroit, Michigan. As uncompromising as Monsieur Cadillac when he set foot upon the shores of the Detroit River, built his empire and monopolized the fur trade that governed the French vogue of the early 1700s, in the truest fashion sense of the arsenal of democracy, DFIANT iconically represents Detroit’s global brutality, symbolically awakens the cyclic rebirth of an urban goliath, and provides the essential street creds to those who continue to march amidst its harsh elements to truly rise from the ashes.”

323East is located at 323 East Fourth Street in Royal Oak, Michigan. For more information please call 248-246-9544 or visit www.323East.com.