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Mark Astrella is an accomplished Illustrator and a professional Lighting Designer.
As a child with an acute eye for drawing and a penchant for meticulous detail, Astrella always knew he would become an artist. After college he opened a commercial art studio in Massachusetts called Astrella Art Design and provided illustration and graphic design to ad agencies and businesses. Over the years he created hundreds of logos and everything from business cards to billboards. His illustrations and cartoons have appeared in thousands of newspapers and magazines in over 80 countries and children’s books that he has illustrated have been published and distributed worldwide in English and Spanish.
In the 1980’s, the Boston music scene was booming and Astrella loved to moonlight as a “lightman” for local rock bands. The aspects of lighting a stage and painting a canvas are very similar activities in that color, contrast, symmetry, texture, mood and execution all come into play. After years of gigs and fed up with the New England weather, he made a 6000 mile move to Maui in 1995 and found an exquisite island paradise with a flourishing art community and a soothing tropical breeze. He met and married a beautiful local girl and began painting scenes of the ocean. He exhibited his art in local galleries and received commissions from tourists. He was also offered a position as the Lighting Director for a newly built 32 million dollar theater, the Maui Arts & Cultural Center, where he continues to light the stage for major music and dance acts, and occasionally tours with shows that travel across the US, Japan and Europe.
This melding of painting and lighting, layout and staging, technique and technician is amassing into his latest endeavor -a series of paintings depicting stage performances lit in his own unique way, from an expert knowledge of how light falls across an object and how contrasting colors combine on skin and costumes.
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