Stanley Medders, one of Americas noted conservationist writer, writes a perceptive article on Mulleian entitled "Portrait of a Man as a Young Artist"

Walk past 629 Sutter street at almost any time of day and you can find clusters of disparate window shoppers staring in fascination at the bleeding arm. Fur-clad matrons rub elbow with sandaled “street people,” and dapper men in business suits stop short on the sidewalk, then stroll irresistibly over to examine the intriguing painting themselves. Opinions are exchanged, at first calmly, then gradually growing more heated as interpretations differ and concepts clash.

But divergent opinion of “The Right Hand of Carpenters Apprentice” is nothing new to Mark Mulleian, one of San Francisco’s youngest, and certainly most original, artists. Nor is he disturbed by it. “Interpretation of a painting is such a personal thing,” he says, his penetrating brown eyes seeming to turn inward while still managing to take in everything around him. “It’s all based on individual experience, on each person’s unique symbols which set him apart from everyone else and his judgment intrinsic.”

Not only judgment, you think, but artistic creation as well. For Mulleian’s own particular symbols are undeniably individual, and they communicate so personal and vivid a quality that long after you’ve studied his canvasses, their powerful images seem to haunt even your sleeping hours.

Yet his symbols represent the time-honored themes: abandonment, hope, freedom, and above all , escape from the confinements of the physical world. It’s his treatment of them that’s so distinctive you hesitate to label him. A realist he is, certainly, but he goes far beyond realism in his constant probing of a realm where imagination and dreams have an even greater reality than the so-called real world. Surrealist? Definitely, but his utter simplicity defies you to place his paintings in the same category as the jumbled juxtapositions of Miro or Tanguy.

So you give up all attempts at classification because it’s really not important anyway, and you invite him out for coffee. He suggests the Marines’ Memorial Club. It’s only half a block away, and besides, he feels at home there.

“No,” he smiles, once you’re comfortably ensconced in a booth, “I was never in the navy. I spent two years in the army, through, part of them in Vietnam.”

Vietnam…During one of the particularly maniacal and blood-letting battles of the Tet offensive, his artillery position is under constant bombardment. In a dilapidated bunker, he and twelve of his buddies huddle in silence and fear as shells scream overhead in deafening incessancy. Trembling violently, he suddenly leaps to his feet to mouth a silent prayer. Moments later, a 75 millimeter mortar round tears through the bunker roof. Miraculously, no one is killed, or even wounded by the showering eruption of red-hot shrapnel.

You search your memory for some traces of the horrible experience of war in his paintings, but all you can come up with is a striking canvas entitled “the Chain” An irregular slab of stone holds imbedded in its time-worn surface a dangling length of chain, its manacle closed and empty. To the left, the suggestion of a prison window with broken bars, above, a nebulous crescent moon.

You try not to let your imagination run away with you, but then you think, Why not? Why couldn’t it have been inspired by a hope, a dream of a future time when man has evolved far beyond a need even for confinement or bondage, to say nothing of the primitive instinct for waging war?

Suddenly, across the table from you, Mulleian runs his long fingers through his thick hair. “My childhood?” he asks slowly, and again his eyes turn inward. But they show no surprise at your sudden question. Everything is relevant in his cosmic world.

You think of the many canvasses where symbols of abandonment abound. A tricycle with no pedals is inextricably entangled in an inductile cobweb maze; a forlorn-looking rag doll lies crumpled at the foot of a dilapidated flight of stairs stuck behind a disconnected doorbell.

Visions of a childhood in which loneliness mingles with disillusion, so different from the usual surrealist-created world where roseate images of a long-past youth are resuscitated in the full-bloom freshness of childhood felicity.

At 13, he’s already deeply absorbed in his painting. His life becomes a series of long hours in art museums and assiduous study of Michelangelo and Dali. All forms of life and matter suddenly assume a new and deeper meaning for him, and the long-smoldering desire to express his own interior universe bursts across his canvasses.

You leave the Memorial Club and walk slowly back up to the Frank Gallery. Out front, a bony-faced woman in tweeds is soliloquizing to anyone who’ll listen. ‘The artist himself told me the story of ‘The Right Arm of the Carpenter’s Apprentice’. It’s a recreation of the crucifixion as understood by Professor Lorenzo Ferri. From his 60 years of study,

Professor Ferri concluded that Jesus was about six feet tall, and of a muscular build because of His physical labor as a carpenter. He also deduced that Jesus' left arm was more than an inch and a half shorter than His right.

“”When He was placed on the cross, His executioners discovered that His left wrist didn’t reach the hole that had been readied for it. So they wrenched His arm dislocating the shoulder. Still His wrist wouldn’t reach the hole, so they drove the spike through the palm instead. The right arm was nailed through the wrist as was the customary Roman method of execution.”

Inside, sundry lovers of art scrutinize the Mulleian paintings. A tall Swede with an unruly shock of straw-colored hair fumbles in his vest pocket, never once taking his eyes off a starkly beautiful painting called ‘The Cloth’. Pulling out a magnifying glass, he intently examines the phenomenal folds of dazzling white cloth hanging against a black “void”. The lush folds seem bathed in celestial light, and the rust-colored stains of blood near the tattered bottom speak somberly of the suffering and death of Christ.

A young couple from Ohio stands engrossed before the colors of a desolate pond, is edges choked by the intricate detail of myriad water plants. In the background, a sagging country mailbox; almost lost in the bleakness, a solitary figure trudging along a rutted lane.

Moving away slowly, the couple begins to examine the soft, warm tones of colorful Lecoques, but soon their eyes turn irresistibly back to the desolate pond. Now they discover a new detail in the canvas through its broken pane of glass hanging in a rotting frame.

Once more they move away, but even the inviting intimacy of Bufano’s bronze miniature animals cannot stave off their fascination with the melancholy pond.

Resolutely they walk over to the desk with checkbook drawn, and the pond joins the multitude of other Mulleian paintings in the homes and churches from California to New York, from Vancouver to Quebec.

In another painting, "Stone Effigy", a figure carving the stone as he turns and watches us observing him is entrapped in his own creation? But in “The Stone Hand”, the liberation is already beginning. Here, only the hand is caught in the stone. Yet there’s blood dripping from it, suggesting, of course, that the suffering still continues. To seek complete knowledge while having only our limited mental resources to work with makes man’s lot a difficult one. But this search for such an ideal is the only way I know to free the stone hand. And whether mankind knows it or not, it’s the only way to free his.

You recognize from his tortured words that his is the age-old quest of the poet to embrace the universe through the magic of unprecedented sensations and haunted dreams. The passionate search for supreme knowledge that goes far beyond the limits of all that is human. The desperate pursuit that drove Van Gogh over the edge of insanity and Rimbaud to the brink of hell.

You know, too, that Mark hasn’t hesitated to take his own Rimbaudian journey – beyond the confines of the visible, exterior world, down the torturous road of a liberated subconscious. He’s taken it in the warm tones of yellow and brown in a harmonious painting called “The Doorknob”. A key hanging near the knob is broken, but the shadow is that of a whole key, symbol of the cosmic door that will never be opened by a key form the physical world.

Having walked up to Grace Cathedral one blustery winter day to examine the Ghiberti Doors, he squeezed through the iron grillwork and reached his hand out hesitantly to touch one of the intricate panels. Always locked, the doors suddenly and inexplicably swung open.

Returning to his studio to capture the deep paradoxical feelings of hope and sadness that immediately swept over him, he created his own extraordinary version of the spectacular doors.

As the strikingly realistic panels open onto a misty, dream-like scene, promising a release from all worldly restraints, an invitation to the transcendent revelation, you can almost feel the artist’s inner vibrations; sense his passing to the “other side”. And most amazing, you know that even though he has gone beyond the limits, he’s not only returned unscathed, but his mind is even more lucid because of the unparalleled experiences.

You see this incredible ability to penetrate all human boundaries – and even more dramatically presented – when you return to the Frank Gallery a month or so later. As you pass the window, you glance up – and suddenly you’re looking into the most haunting eyes you’ve ever seen. For a long time afterwards your scalp still prickles, because you realize that what you’ve just witnessed is the birth throes of the universe as new-born man bursts forth from a pulsating womb of stone. His face is uplifted, and on his cheek there gleams a solitary tear. But it’s his eyes that hold you spellbound as they gaze in awe at some sight so miraculous it’s never before been looked upon by any human eye.

Mulleian invites you up into the display window for a closer look at new-born man. You see immediately that the eyes, which had captivated you so from the sidewalk below, are even more haunting from a foot away. And more astonishing, the vibrant pupils seem suddenly to dilate – then to contract gradually into mere black slits – with the slightest change in light. The impression is so strong you feel that at any moment he’ll step from his clinging shell of stone to announce to a startled world that he’s just seen the ultimate truth – everything that is and everything that might possibly be.

The more you study his paintings, the more it commences to grow on you, this remarkable world of Mulleian’s. You begin to look at everything with new-found perspective. You see the suffering of all mankind as you watch the sun coagulate beyond the distant Farallons, the salvation of the universe on a wind-swept dune where lovers gently embrace.

And his hope has become your hope, you think, as you watch him add the finishing touches to a Bufano-inspired cart, laden with building stone. Hope for a new and indestructible world, the very harmonious and human world that Benny himself sought with such restive passion.

It seems to drive him like an inexorable hunger, this obsession of his to create a more perfect world. “I feel I’m ready to embark on a completely new phase in my painting”, he says with an almost vehement impatience. “If you probe the soul deeply enough you can discover an indelible truth even in a dying world. And this truth can be captured on canvas.”

You’re walking down to a cafeteria on Geary Street as the rain lashes at you in slanting fury. In the swishing sounds made by the tires of passing automobiles, you’re sure you hear the wrenching struggle of the artist as he grapples with the innermost part of his being.

The meal is finished. Mulleian pushes his cup of cold coffee aside and leans back in his chair, his eyes burning orbs. “To reconcile man with himself, then with the universe,” he says intently. “That’s what I have to accomplish. If only there’s time enough…”

There will be time, you want to protest; time for your unique genius to explore realms that even you haven’t dreamed of yet; time to create from the throbbing intensity of you experience your own cosmic vision.

Much later, when you leave the cafeteria, the rain has stopped completely. The freshly-washed streets which glisten in the blinking lights seem to offer their own promise of purification. In the late evening hush that has fallen over Mason Street, time hangs oddly suspended. And to your right, the huge neon star atop the Sir Francis Drake Hotel turns slowly, as if announcing the birth of a new but decipherable world to an awed Magus.

In 1972 Mr. Medders produced the insightful and perceptive article on Mark Mulleian entitled "Portrait Of A Man As A Young Artist", a comprehensive study describing the artist's transcendent insights, written in a personal, novelistic style after spending a year studying the artist, his work and public reaction to his paintings.

Writer Stanley Medders, one of Americas noted conservationists and prolific writer, acclaimed for his numerous feature contributions to "National Parks Conservation Magazine" as well as to "California Living" (a special feature of the weekend editions of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle), became a powerful and respected voice in protecting our national parks and deserts through his writings on topics ranging from the preservation of nature's wild life, saving San Francisco Bay wetlands, to the city of Santa Cruz's solution to the problem of urban decay.