Born in the late 1960s Mark grew up in a lower middle class
family in a small town in East Tennessee son of a brick mason/restaurant owner.
He loved comic books, animation, sci-fi, and for the most part was
only an average student in school. When he attended junior college he started
a major in technical drawing that with time ended up being a studio
art degree due to strong mentorship via a professor in their art
department. Struggling at first Mark found that his niche in art was
abstract expressionism loving the artistic and emotional freedom it allowed.
Upon attending a major university he mistakenly majored in the
graphic arts which proved to be what he called “a cold fish” in the
world of art indeed a heartless juggernaut of hostile competition that Mark
wanted no part of, but out of fear of being unable to find a “real job” kept
throwing himself at that field with seriously bad emotional repercussions.
Eventually, having almost enough hours for a master’s degree he dropped
out due to sheer burn out on academia. Mark’s studies included art
history, sculpture, graphic arts, photography, world theology, and lastly
anthropology.

During his working years he had been working construction work in a highly
abusive environment and towards his last year in college he had to move on
acquiring another job in an environmental lab through the college.
It proved to be an interesting position, and finally was hired on by a
technical agency to work full time at the lab. For Mark this job would last
only three years until mass lay-offs decimated his entire department
including him. Fortunately, he had early warning, and was able to find a permanent
job in the computer technical field in which he resides to this day.

Mark has generally never been lucky in love after a string of bad relationship he got married
in 2004, and became separated in less than nine months over lack of communication
and her unreasoning desire to have a child. Both parties accepted equal
responsibility, and the divorce in 2008 was peaceful.
Note that Mark considers himself far from perfect.

After the separation his lack of faith in “relationships” led to an attitude
of what could only be called “what the hell”. He strongly wanted to get into
a world that he had avoided due to guilt for over thirty years. So in
2005 he took up doing fetish photography out of his small apartment starting
out with a small $295 digital camera with less than spectacular results.
The women he hired were tech people, hairdressers, and massage therapists.
With time his photography improved as he was able to acquire better camera
equipment, and his confidence improved. His work included leather,
vinyl wear, sweaters, vintage, rope bondage, and shibari. Mark met a lot
of wonderful people. He did a show at an alternative club in 2006,
and worked with a model and attended the 2006 Fetishcon.

2009, he had an anomaly in his right eye, and had to have a series of very
expensive and very scary treatments for it, which “appear” to have worked.
The anomaly was nothing that could be explained, and was similar to AMD
(macular degeneration), and could return at any point. He left the old apartment
and moved into Knoxville. During the fall of 2009 he started a series of paintings including his first
large scale work. His art and photography is sporadic at this point, but he hopes
with the reduction in some of his debt to be able to work more in the very
near future. His ultimate desire is to create a large body of artwork over the
next couple of years.

Mark is a liberal progressive, human and civil rights advocate, Christian-esk agnostic and Unitarian
Universalist. He currently resides in Knoxville, TN and is engaged to be married in spring
of 2012.