Mark Edwards attended Medway college of Art and Walthamstow NW London.
He and his wife moved from Kent to the NW coast of Sutherland in 1974. For nearly 40 years he has been a full time painter and book illustrator. In the late 70's and early 80's he regularly showed at the 369 Gallery in Edinburgh, the Dunkeld Gallery, Pitlochry Festival Theatre and The Latham Gallery in Roanoke Virginia.
It was during this period he was invited to join the prestigious London art agency Artist partners, run by the art director Christine Isteed.
Over the years he has illustrated literally hundreds of book covers for authors such as Kingsley Amis, Beryl Bainbridge, Sue Townsend, Philip Pullman (as seen in the BBC adaptation of the ‘Sally Lockhart Quartet’ recently portrayed by Billie Piper) Michael Morpurgo (one of which was the 'War Horse' staged at the National Theatre in London) and a series of books by the Bard himself, William Shakespeare.
Also various Picture books such as ‘The Sand Children’ by Joyce Dunbar and ‘Narnia Chronology’ by CS Lewis (published in May 08) have been brought to life by Mark’s illustrations. And in 2009 he completed a series of 18 Falco books by Lindsey Davis.
Mark’s varied illustration techniques have been analysed, alongside other international artists in ‘The New Guide to Illustration’ (Phaidon Press 1990).
Throughout this time he has always continued to paint and exhibit his own work regularly throughout Scotland.
In 2008 the present series of work made its debut appearance in the form of a sellout exhibition at the Tallantyre Gallery in Morpeth Northumberland. It was at this time Mark was also approached by Washington Green Fine Art Ltd to exclusively sell limited edition prints of his work globally; a story that featured on BBC Scotland news at the time.
In 2009 he had another successful exhibition at the Tallantyre Gallery and since then his paintings and limited edition prints have continually been exhibited throughout the UK, Europe and North America.