As Mark Marino puts it, most people draw the same at age 7, but not all children are entertained by the activity for hours on end.
“I had a room in the basement by myself at age 7 and I would go down there and draw pictures, copy pictures out of books, draw dinosaurs, gorillas and stuff like that,” said Marino, owner of the Marko Marino Studio Gallery. “I could spend hours doing it.”
Marino kept his passion for art, but because he was unsure if he would be able to make it as an artist, he hesitated to commit to art as his career.
“It seems like I tried everything but art,” he said.
It wasn’t until his father died in 2010 that Marnio decided life was too short to not do what you love. Meeting his wife, Anne, also helped shape his perspective.
“I was inspired by what I saw Anne accomplish with her life in just a few short years, leaving with nothing from a difficult divorce with a 1-year-old son… and building a business from scratch with virtually no help,” he said. “I realized that I could and would be the accomplished artist that I always wanted to be.”
In January of 2015, Marino packed up and moved to Idaho Falls to be with his new family. Despite several personal setbacks, Marino immersed himself in the Idaho Falls art scene with several one-man shows in various locations around town, including the Republic Bar and Grill and La Vanilla Bean.
In September of the same year, Marino opened the Marko Marino Studio Gallery on the northwest corner of Broadway and Park Ave.
“What I want to do is not just be part of the art community, but actually help it grow here,” he said.
Marino intends to use his new gallery to accomplish just that by displaying different artists’ work and by using his studio to host various art workshops.
His gallery’s opening group of artists included Peggy Judy, a contemporary Western horse artist, Robert Moore, a nationally known landscape painter, David Mensing, a regional landscape painter from western Idaho, and Kathy Burgraff, a local contemporary oil and mixed media artist.
To learn more about the Marko Marino Studio Gallery, visit www.markomarino.com.