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My name is Mark Sheeky and I am an artist, musician and computer programmer.
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I was born in 1972 in South Cheshire, England. My first creative work was designing computer games and by 1991 I began developing public domain games for Amiga computers under the name of Scorpius Software. I also discovered music at that time, using simple software to write the music that I used in my games. By 1998 I had released twenty five software titles for the Amiga.
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In 1998 I began developing software (mostly games) for Windows PC computers under the new name of Cornutopia Software. My first PC game, Arcangel - The Legacy of Peace, took 18 months to develop but the game remained unpublished due to a poor contractual arrangement with the publisher. This and similar incidents left me distrustful of publishers. This was my lowest point.
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In 2001 I began to write poetry for the first time in my life and found some solace in the activity. An early poem, Afterlife, came second in a poetry competition and I have since regularly entered poetry contests. Later that year I developed Noise Station, music software that combined a synthesizer and music sequencer, effectively a virtual music studio.
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In 2002 I decided to stop chasing game publishers and founded the Cornutopia website, a place to sell my games directly to game players. Five games were written that year, as well as three CD's of music, all composed using Noise Station. I founded IndieSFX this year too, a sound effects website for the independent computer game industry. Later in the year, the much improved Noise Station 2 was developed, and plans for a new more complex game began to form. That game, Flatspace, was released a year later and was my first game to sell more than ten copies.
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At around that time I started to write songs. My first song came to me in a dream, and enthused by this newly discovered gift I wrote profusely, over one hundred songs that year. I entered the U.K. National Song Writing Contest and became a semi-finalist with two of my songs, and in 2007 became a competitive semi-finalist again with the song One Day. My song writing and producing continues to the present day.
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I started to experiment with digital art in 2002. Since my early days as a game developer I had always used computers to make images, but by that time I was using fractals and complex algorithms to make swirling digital imagery. The pictures were purely decorative with no message or meaning and I remained largely ignorant of the art world.
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In late 2004 a Channel 4 art contest led me to an Internet forum and my first experiment with real art media. I painted my first oil painting in August, a copy of an obscure van Gogh painting called Girl in the Woods. I experimented with styles and subjects over the next year or so, while continuing to develop games for most of the time.
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At the start of 2006 I discovered classical painting techniques of painting in several delicate layers each over the other. The results looked better than my previous pictures, possessing a physical depth and beauty that a single layered painting could not. I began to practise painting techniques with more vigour, and started to assess the fundamentals of art; what a picture should mean, what makes an artwork good. My mental processes had started to change and my passion for painting began to surpass any attachment to computer games.
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I sold my first painting in July 2006 and won first prize in a charity art competition in the same year. In November my first great painting, Penalties became a finalist in the international One Love Football Art competition and was highlighted on the BBC arts website.
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By the start of 2007 I had answered my questions on what makes a great artwork, and in 2008 my attitude began to change as my confidence as an artist increased. From a creative year I entered a social one, and 2009 was a year of rebirth, personal goals and a new interest in psychology and aesthetics. I began 2010 with new ambitions and a renewed focus on the mastery of craft.
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A good picture should possess three things; body, the physical appearance of the picture; mind, the meaning on an intellectual level; and soul, the vital feeling, the essential emotion. All great artworks possess these three things. A great artwork is original, it stands alone, it does not require the viewer to know anything about art or the art of the past. A great artwork shows great skill of execution and powerful imagination. A great artwork is loved, appreciated by small children for its beauty, lofty philosophers for its intelligence in concept, and by romantic poets for its feeling. A great artwork is unforgettable and everlasting.
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I aim to make many great artworks. Please look closely at the artwork on this site. Observe my evolution as an artist and anticipate with joy the future artworks I will produce. All of my artwork is for sale and as a craftsman am available for commissioned work.
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