Mark Flood in Conversation with Noah Becker

Cover, Mark Flood in the 1990s by Clark Flood.

By NOAH BECKER May 8, 2025 

NOAH BECKER: Your work spans from punk music to conceptual art. How has your experience in Culturcide influenced your visual art practice?

MARK FLOOD: Also, I got involved with a band and I do some of their imagery. The band is called Vulturcide and I think the first song is going up on  bandcamp any day now.

The lace paintings have been described as “spinster abstraction.” What draws you to lace as a material, and what are you communicating through this process?

So I've been kind of phasing out the Mark Flood because people stopped buying Mark Flood paintings about eight years ago. There were intermittent sales, but I lost interest. I figured it was time to get off stage.

Vulturicide Ad.

Your text-based paintings like “Another Painting” seem to poke fun at the art world. Are these works a critique, a joke, or something else entirely?

And it took about eight years to spend all my money...

I think the last things I'm finishing Mark Flood up with, are memes that I can print out either on paper or canvas...I just email galleries the memes and they print them out on their end.

In 2012, you created Mark Flood Resents, where nothing was for sale. What inspired that format, and how did it reflect your views on the commercialization of art?

So I got a commercial dealer in Houston, which I like because that's where I live most of the time.  And he told me that the people he was selling my Mark Flood Art to never heard of me and didn't care. Which I found liberating. 

Peter Donovan, Luis, 2025. 
 

How has your time working outside the art world—in offices, schools, and museums—shaped your artistic voice and perspective?

So I ended up changing my name to Peter Donovan and doing commercial cowboy art. At least it was supposed to be commercial. But it got kind of weird. The dealer showed me other peoples cowboy art and said- I'm selling these as fast as they make them. So I tried to make them, but mine are a lot different ... kind of surreal. 

You’ve used a wide range of media over the years. How do you decide what form a new idea or project should take?

The funny thing is I sell them so cheap and they take so long to make… it's sort of like I'm working for minimum wage, but I kind of like that. 

Your collaboration with the jewelry company Love for Both of Us brought your work into a very different medium. What was it like translating your vision into wearable art?

I’m not much of a fashion person so I just try to enable designers as best I can, when they get interested. 

Mark Flood, Thumbs Up Meme.
 

What role does humor play in your work, especially when you’re addressing serious or cynical views of the art world?

The old art world I was in died. But it's hard to be sure because nobody has good information. It's all gossip. 

You’ve often embraced chaos in your exhibitions. What do you hope viewers take away from the rawness or unpolished nature of your shows?

When I used to live in Marfa, you could sit on the edge of the desert and see these thunderstorms on the horizon they came blowing, blowing up towards you across the desert. They would be very isolated... a black cloud with the rain underneath, and you would wonder if that storm was going to come your way and rain on you  or was it just gonna go off to the side?

Looking back at your decades-long career, what has changed most in how you think about art—and what, if anything, has stayed the same? 

That's the way I feel about World War III. I can see it on the horizon. I wonder if it's going to come to my town. It's kind of a good time to hunker down. WM