Mark Thomas Gibson's personal lens on American culture stems from his multifaceted viewpoint as an artist—as a black male, a professor, and an American history buff. These myriad and often colliding perspectives fuel his exploration of contemporary culture through languages of drawing, painting, print, and sculpture revealing a vision of a satirical, dystopian America where every viewer is implicated as a potential character within the story.
Gibson received his B.F.A. from The Cooper Union in 2002 and his M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art in 2013. During his time at Yale, Gibson was the recipient of the Ely Harwood Schless Memorial Fund Award in 2013. Gibson is currently a critic and assistant dean of student relations at the Yale School of Art.
In 2016 Gibson co-curated the exhibition Black Pulp! With William Villalongo, which has travelled from Yale University to IPCNY, USF, and Wesleyan. Black Pulp! was reviewed in The New York Times and Art in America.
Also in 2016, Gibson released his first book, Some Monsters Loom Large, with the help of an e-Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts. The book was recently re-issued in a second edition in partnership with IPCNY. Gibson’s second book Early Retirement was released in 2017 in New York with Edition Patrick Frey, Zurich, CH. Mark Thomas Gibson is represented by Fredericks Freiser Gallery, New York.
During his first MacDowell residency, he completed several paintings and drawings to be shown at Fredericks and Freiser Gallery in Chelsea, NY. The work was a companion to his book Early Retirement. In 2024, Gibson worked on his third artist monograph Behold the Black Wolf. A fictional tale of a post reconstruction serial killer. He is producing several hundred collages to create the images for the book.
