Marlin Bert lives and works in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania. He studied at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design (PCA&D) and is a member of the Echo Valley Art Group. His practice moves mainly in abstraction with repetition appearing throughout his work. In his postcard works, Bert combined his Pop imagery, for which he is known, with repetition; an interest that continues in the repeated forms and patterns of his paintings.
A circle has no privileged beginning and no definitive end. It can suggest continuity, enclosure, recurrence, or renewal.
In Bert’s paintings, circles rarely remain singular or still. They accumulate, multiply, overlap, cluster, and spread across the surface. Individual marks become communities; the spaces within and between them become active parts of the composition. What may appear repetitive from a distance becomes remarkably varied upon closer examination.
The circle is among the simplest of forms, yet Bert uses it to produce considerable visual variation. No two marks are quite alike. They expand and contract, lean and shift, gather densely and open into quieter passages. Changes in scale, color, transparency, and proximity create movement across the paintings.
Across this body of work, Bert moves between the individual mark and the larger field. Repeated forms can suggest cells, seeds, bubbles, stones, or constellations, while remaining fundamentally abstract. In several works, the circle moves beyond the repeated mark to become the physical shape of the painting itself.
Repetition in these paintings is not sameness. Each circle relates to those around it while retaining its own irregularity. Through accumulation, thousands of individual gestures become larger patterns, surfaces, and fields.
The circle returns again and again, but never quite to the same place.
OPENING FIRST FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 5:00-8:00 P.M.
On VIEW through OCTOBER 31