As a boy growing up, Mark Mille was always interested in the natural world. Since experimenting with oil paints at the age of 12, he has been interpreting the world as he sees it. Hiking and camping in the West and north woods have given him source material for paintings in which he strives for more than the recording of visual fact. Many of his oil paintings of the landscape of southeastern Wisconsin are attempts to capture the mood of specific places, weather and times of day. He states, “My work is not intellectual, it’s emotional. I paint in response to the things that excite me.” Mille graduated from Pius High School, earned a BA in broadcast journalism from Marquette University and studied at the Milwaukee School of Fine Arts. He taught illustration at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and worked as an art glass and liturgical interior designer/illustrator. His early, detailed painting style has evolved into a more spontaneous, painterly approach to realism. Having explored the use of lithography, gouache and watercolor for artistic expression, he now works exclusively in oils and soft pastels. While participating in local, national and international exhibitions he continues to reside with his wife in Milwaukee and to work in his home studio.1
An internationally collected and award winning artist, Mark Mille has been creating beautiful illustrations, paintings and photographs for over 30 years. During his career he has produced advertising and editorial illustrations for major national clients including Pepsico, Dow Jones, Nabisco, United Airlines and Dell Publishing, and original oil and pastel paintings that are in corporate and private collections across the country and abroad. Throughout that time, the one constant has been the artist’s camera. Fascinated as a child by his family's old Kodak Brownie camera and his father’s 3-D slides, an interest in photography began early. Later, a 35mm SLR became a must for shooting illustration reference, and invaluable for refreshing the memory while painting. Inspired and energized by the natural landscape, and embracing the latest capture, post-processing and printing techniques, he remains more enthused than ever for exploring new avenues of artistic expression.2
Mille’s work in the Cedarburg Art Museum collection entitled Forest Patterns is an oil on canvas done as a studio painting in 1984. It was created from memory and photo reference of a location in Pike Lake State Park in Washington County. This work is an attempt to convey the striking sensation one has in viewing sunlight shining through the colorful leaves of a brilliant autumn afternoon.3

1© 7/5/2007 Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend,Wisconsin 6/2/2010 http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/mark-w-mille/profile-3625.aspx
2 www.markmille.com/about.html
3 artist’s own statement, September 2013.