mark zapico

Artist Statement

Zapico’s work is anchored in place.
Across varied styles, media, and techniques, place is the recurring theme—whether a remembered past, a singular experience, a scene from the collective unconscious, or the products of dream and imagination.

Place in time.
Place in memory.
Place in the moment.
Place as imagination and as physical space.

His practice is guided by immediacy and spontaneity, informed by weight, gesture, and scale. Zapico captures time, humanity, and lives once lived—spaces we long for, imagine, or inherit; places shaped by people or left behind by them. Drawing on a background in art direction and design, his pieces are thoughtful, expressive, tactile, and resolute.

Mark Zapico graduated from the College for Creative Studies with a BFA in Advertising Design. After an award-winning career spanning over 25 years in the advertising industry he began teaching at CCS and soon assumed the chair position of the Advertising Department. After 17 years he retired in 2020. Working in both Grosse Pointe Park and Port Austin, he creates work in oil, latex, watercolor and mixed media.
His work has been selected for numerous exhibitions and competitions including CCS Alumni and Faculty exhibitions, the Detroit Wine Auction, Noel Night, the Grosse Pointe Art Association, Art Works Detroit, Art for God's Sake, WYZ Bar at Aloft Hotel in Detroit and the Detroit Artists Market. Zapico's paintings are part of many private collections and two are in the permanent collection of the Henry Ford Hospital Healing Arts Center in Detroit.