the Art of ​Mark Rehkopf

When Mark was twelve years old he saw a television commercial for a movie that featured robots, ray guns, adventurous heroes, scary masked villians, and a beautiful girl with a ray gun. He immediately asked his mom if he could go see ... 'Barbarella'. His mom said no, but took him to see 'Star Wars' instead. Life was never quite the same after that.

   Mark grew up in southern Ontario, Canada. After showing signs of weakness in math class, Mark became interested in drawing, which led him to comics and animation, bad ( and good ) science fiction and monster flicks, Rock and Roll, and many other exciting elements of 'B movie Culturalism'.

  Mark graduated from Technical illustration at Sheridan College and went on to employment in the television, animation and museum industries, doing any and all types of artwork he could find. In 1998, Mark was fortunate to join up with Research Casting International, and he designed, sculpted, painted and built lifesize dinosaurs for natural history museums around the world. He also established himself as an independent painter and sculptor, working in several different styles and subjects.  Mark draws influence from a wide variety of artists such as the turn of the century painters like N C Wyeth, as well as artists from current film and animation companies such as Lucasfilm, Weta Ltd., and Disney.

   Today he concentrates on painting and illustrating for public companies and private collectors. He has a penchant for painting retro pop culture images, science fiction and fantasy, dinosaurs and pinup girls, but also tackles landscapes and modern abstracts on occasion.

   Mark's illustrative artwork ( 1995 - 2008 ) has been collected in a self-published book entitled 'Adventure Visuals - the Art of Mark Rehkopf ' ( sold out ).