All that Glimmers: Mark Dassoulas balances hard and soft

Mark Dassoulas, “Mirage” (Gallery Neptune & Brown)

Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye

Nov 19, 2025

THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF MARK DASSOULAS’S PAINTINGS are simple, yet their totalities are complex and elusive. Gazing deeply at them doesn’t entirely unlock the riddle of how they’re made. The pictures in Gallery Neptune & Brown’s “Equilibrium” deftly meld two varieties of mid-20th-century abstraction: Hard-edged rectangular or triangular forms melt into fields of color as gauzy and fluid as anything ever devised by Leon Berkowitz. The D.C. native transcends the precedents for his style, which is familiar in general -- he cites Rothko and Vermeer as inspirations -- while distinctive in its particulars.

Some common quick impressions of Dassoulas’s work are wrong, the gallerists report. The pileup of many translucent strata yields an effect that resembles encaustic, and some geometric forms appear to be folded or outlined by incisions. But the painter uses only pencil, tape, and glazes of acrylic paint to create his luminous canvases.

The pencil work is not hidden, although it can seem to be deeply submerged beneath layers of pigment. Sometimes the drawing appears to exist on different planes altogether, as in “Vitruvian Orange,” in which sketchy forms lurk below color blocks outlined in heavy lines. Colors can be bold and evenly applied, as in the all-red “Apex,” or watery and mottled. The four pictures in the “Beginnings” series feature regions whose hues are intriguingly blotched, as if their central geometric figures had begun to ooze.

Such variations add to the appeal of these paintings, as if their simulated profound depths and alluring luminosity were not enough. A clue to these attributes comes from the Internet, which reveals that the artist -- who rarely exhibits his work publicly in his hometown -- is also an accomplished realist painter. Whether his subject is a mountain landscape or just a wispy array of lines and color, Dassoulas is a master illusionist.


See the Full Review Here