Mark Thayer
North Shore
Date installed: April, 2024
Black & white, and color photography
Artist’s website: mark@markthayer.com
Artist’s price list for prints
We asked Mark if he would introduce himself and share a bit about his photography, and here is what he wrote…
A bit about me: It was largely through photography that I fell so deeply in love with the North Shore. Unsurprisingly, my long relationship with the North Shore has greatly enriched my love affair with photography.
In 1980, I graduated from the New England School of Photography. My time there was divided equally between developing commercial skills and searching for my identity in the world of fine art photography.
During my 40 year career as an advertising photographer, I spent hundreds of hours taking pictures of things that go fast: America’s Cup sailboats up on foils, mountain bikes on suicidal downhills, motorcycles on racetracks, downhill skiers in something approaching free fall.
My fine art work requires a different approach. When I’m out in the world, just shooting for myself, everything slows down. I look through the viewfinder, my breathing quiets, my mind clears, and I let the moment wash over me. I try for patience and openness. I’ll often happen upon a scene that I know has images waiting to be seen, possibly captured, and a conversation begins. It can be an exciting and rewarding experience.
My goal is always to imbue the photographs with my own personal perspective. Ideally, I would help my audience experience the world in a way they may not have otherwise.
I’m extremely grateful to the Mary Jo Rines Gallery and the First Parish Church for giving me an opportunity to share my work with you. I look forward to your comments and am always interested in having conversations about art.
Welcome to the Mary Jo Rines Virtual Gallery. Thank you for visiting. We’re delighted to share the work of photographer Mark Thayer, a 40-year resident of the North Shore and a master at his craft. In his work, Mark shoots both color and black & white, as he takes us on an exploration of the beaches, estuaries, and rocky shores along the Atlantic coast north of Boston. He offers us fresh perspectives on classic scenes, whether they depict the drama unfolding along the shoreline or the eerie stillness of a marina blanketed in snow. His compositions are evocative, and engaging.
Luckily for us, Mark is as capable in his prose as he is with his camera. You will enjoy his carefully nuanced and pointed writing, as he speaks to the deep relationship he enjoys with his subjects—”feeling the pulse”, as he describes it, “of our living planet.” If you value deep and thoughtful insights on an artist’s work, you’ve come to the right place.
Mark graduated from the New England School of Photography in Boston in 1978 and opened his own studio in 1983. In this exhibit he focuses on his personal work. But his commercial clients are many in number, and have included Bose Audio, Sperry Footwear, Titleist Golf, Bell Helmets, Raleigh Bicycles, and American Express. He has exhibited his work at the Griffin Museum of Photography, True North Gallery, and New England Biolabs, among others.
The Mary Jo Rines Gallery at First Parish was named for its founder and celebrated watercolorist. The mission of the Gallery is to "add another dimension to the spiritual fabric of our lives by exhibiting the work of visual artists who seek to contribute to a deeper understanding of the human condition." Mark Thayer is a welcome addition to the creative people whose vision and hard work help us on our path.
We hope you click through and enjoy the exhibit…
Best wishes,
The First Parish Art Committee
Committee Note: Mark’s work in this exhibit is for sale, and we invite you to direct any inquiries to Larry Grob (617-817-3123 or lagrob@mac.com) for an introduction to the artist. You’ll find a link to his price list above.
We hope you enjoy Mark’s work. If you’d like, you can click below to send him a comment or question…
At the Edge…
This seascape series has been ongoing since early 2014. I live on the North Shore of Massachusetts, a short stroll from the ocean. I’ve spent hundreds of hours patrolling the New England coastline, observing and discovering the personalities of its many beaches, estuaries, and rocky shores. The weather, the tide, and the terrain all play a part in how the interaction between land, sea and atmosphere displays itself.
No other zone on earth so clearly conveys the pulse of our living planet. To stand at the edge of the sea, feeling the tug of a receding wave, is to have a finger on that pulse. This boundary layer, this ecotone, gives life to a third, and wholly mesmerizing, environment. The shore exerts is influence over the ocean openly and often flamboyantly as it trips each successive swell, while the sea molds sand and stone with a (sometimes only marginally) more patient hand.
One goal of these images is to reveal the relationship between wet and dry that goes deeper than an all-encompassing landscape. I search for personality traits, quirks, and tells that are peculiar to each seaside locale without ignoring the vastness to which it is connected.
Another more personal goal is to share my lifelong love for these places. I’ve played in the surf as a kid and later with my own kids. I’ve been soothed by its calm and humbled by its strength. We all have witnessed the incredible power of the ocean, yet I am often more impressed by the subtleties and little surprises.
I still get a powerful sense of anticipation and a little adrenaline spike every time I approach the coast. Some of it comes from my expectation of new photographs and the rest from somewhere more primal.
(click images to enlarge and see full proportions)
Off Season…
In winter, the slips are empty and the vessels become terrestrial beings, sitting impossibly high and precarious on spindly stilts. These dormant shapes, so completely and literally out of their element, huddle together, waiting out the season that is always too long, with a patience well beyond my own. The blinding white shrink wrap transforms a collection of winterized boats into a range of snow capped mountains or an armada of icebergs moving imperceptibly out to sea.
The rest of the marina is a ghost town. The piers and docks stand empty, looking like an abandoned drive-in movie theater with a slate sky for a screen. The vibrant color palette of boats in summer is replaced by shades of grey, the soft southwesterly breezes shoved aside by the Montreal Express.
For those inhabiting the northern latitudes, the year has only two seasons, boating season and waiting-for-boating season. I wonder if boat owners ever stop in to visit their summer friends, seek them out in their winter cocoons, slap them on the hull, and whisper a prayer for the quick return of summer.
(click images to enlarge and see full proportions)
We are pleased to share additional photographs not included in Mark’s
Rines Gallery show at First Parish Church. Enjoy these selections below.
Wave Study…
Creating these images is pure joy. They’re all taken at my favorite coastal spot on the North Shore, most just after the sun has dropped below the horizon. My approach is entirely reactionary. I have no specific goals or expectations. I play with camera settings at random and often don’t view the images until I’m home. I’ve been at his long enough that I have a pretty good Idea of what I’ll wind up with, but am occasionally, delightfully surprised.
Mill Buildings…
In 2016, I was feeling stalled with my personal work. In an effort to get unstuck, I took part in an Atelier program at The Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. One of the weekly “assignments” led me to the old mills in Lawrence. I became fascinated by the bridges and how they connect buildings at odd angles and elevations, seemingly at random. Some of these are taken at Mass MOCA in North Adams, yet another reason to visit that fantastic museum.
Rantoul Cabot…
Downtown Beverly consists of two “main” streets, Rantoul and Cabot. Rantoul St. cuts a straight line alongside the railroad tracks while Cabot St. arcs around to the east. For more than ten years, I’ve been walking these routes from end-to-end, capturing the physical spaces and chronicling how they’ve changed over that time.
