He has been a professional artist since the day following his High School graduation in 1976 when he started apprenticing under John Q. Archer, designing and fabricating large paintings and specialty projects for clients such as United Airlines, the American Medical Association, and Leo Burnett Advertising.

His formal education started with Marketing/Advertising at Miami University of Ohio and ended with honors in painting and holography (BFA) at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California --- one of the top art schools in world.

He has been Director and Curator for an international Fine Art Holographic Museum and Gallery in the business-district of Los Angeles, California.

As a Holographic Specialist for Applied Holographics , LTD. London, England, he worked on corporate projects involving holographic images of singer Michael Jackson, the NFL's Super Bowl Silver nniversary Trophy, plus portraits of Ronald McDonald, Jacques Cousteau and the Pope.

Since working for God full-time he has been painting a variety of images over the past ten years. His shows in the Philippines include the U.S. Embassys' Thomas Jefferson Cultural Center, and various solo and group shows in the nations capital, Manila. Corporate sponsors of his art shows and lectures in the Philippines include the 3M Corporation and Philippines Fuji-Xerox Corporation. Collectors in Asia include Mr. Reiner Willems/CEO -Shell Oil Company, Senator Sergio Osmena III, Hon. Kurt Hochner/Ambassador of Switzerland, Hon. Rudi Schellnick/Ambassador of Belgium, Mr. Rex Drilon II/Pres. Philippines Fuji-Xerox Corp., and the U.S. Veterans Administration in Manila.

For the past three years in Manila, Mark has been involved in designing an international church in the heart of Manila's financial district, the historic Union Church of Manila. He has been privileged to work with the country's foremost architectural firm, Francisco Manosa & Associates.

Mark donates his paintings entirely to the Christian Cultural Development Foundation. CCDF uses reproductions of Mark's paintings on a line of greeting cards which feature handmade paper from the marginalized poor of the Philippines. This successful endeavor has allowed countless of children and women to leave a life of destruction on the streets, to establishing hope and a new life.

Mark loves to teach others-in lectures or impromptu chats-about "The Divine Order", an ancient compositional ratio that shows up in all of his artwork.

"God has given man a means to understand and express beauty. In sacred scripture when God gave Moses the law, He also gave a pattern to design the Tabernacle. The dimensions for the ark of the covenant and the atonement cover---two and one half cubits by one and one half cubits (45" x 27")---is this divine order of relationship I am referring to. Art terms for this are The Golden Section, Divina Proportiona, the Fibonacci Ratio, or Dynamic symmetry. Cezanne, Da Vinci, Gershwin, Bach, Le Corbusier have consciously used this relationship order in their master works. I try to follow their examples by using this divine order in my work. I call this means of composing a 'Divine Pattern'. One can see this pattern in the relationship of the shapes and lines in my paintings. In a different relationship, I pattern my daily life to a divine order." - Mark Merrill