Mark Hadley

Mark Hadley is a self-taught artist from Dayton, Ohio who is becoming known around the world for his dark art original acrylics.

Now calling Orlando FL home, the sunshine and smiles of his home state are decidedly not a feature of the dark, evocative, and brooding artwork that is thrilling collectors. Hadley’s artistic journey began in earnest in the 5th grade when his art teacher saw a spark in him and offered the youngster private lessons. Mrs. Black coached him through his first still-life watercolor painting, a painting that ended up being published in a book called “Young Outstanding Artists in American Elementary Schools.” In high school, Mark Hadley focused on fantasy drawing with pen and ink. While the artist didn’t play Dungeon & Dragons, he was always intrigued by the artwork and was a fan of Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazzetta. In the early 1990s, Hadley began working with an X-Acto knife and an eraser to create powerful images on black clay scratchboards and became a local restaurant’s in-house artist, performing live alongside belly dancers and fire eaters. He began painting during this time, doing outdoor art shows and conventions, including DragonCon in Atlanta where his black and white grim reaper artwork won a big prize. People were falling in love with his darker, creepier works of art, and at the next three DragonCons, Hadley won “Best Horror” every year. This achievement solidified his dark art. He would go on to attend MegaCon, Spooky Empire, PensaCon, and a handful of other shows where he would steadily make a name for himself thanks to beautifully creepy artwork that has gained a massive, devoted audience.

Instead of sketching or planning, Hadley dives straight into each work of art, starting with the background and then sitting with that until he visualizes an image. He admits that he gets bored easily so he doesn’t tend to stick with just one subject matter. This is why his catalog has both, in his words, “creepy little kids wearing gas masks” to pretty butterflies, sunsets, and fairies. Hadley says that even those traditionally light works of art have a bit of a dark edge to them.

Mark Hadley has been featured in Downtown Disney’s Pop Gallery and Hoypoloi Gallery. A mural he did in Kissimmee Florida was used in the movie Jackass Number Two and he is a “scenic artist” who created an entire cemetery scene for the Undertaker’s last match called “The Bone Yard Match” and was on the team responsible for a 12-foot skull used on WWE’s Monday Night Raw.