Mark Coomer and his 1955 painting of a market near Ajijic

Mark Coomer (1914-2004) was a much traveled and highly successful commercial artist whose varied works over a long professional career continue to show up regularly at auction.

He jumped onto my radar because of a news clipping from 1955 attesting to him donating a painting of “a Mexican market scene near Ajijic, Jalisco, on Lake Chapala” to his former high school. The clipping explained that the painting had been completed “the previous summer.” Judging by a very grainy newspaper photograph, his 1955 Ajijic work was somewhat similar, in size and style, to “The Fruit Stand” (undated) which came up at auction in 2013.

Mark Coomer. Undated. “The Fruit Stand.” Auctioned by The Sell It Now Store in 2013.

Markets clearly appealed to Coomer as subject matter. Another watercolor, “Market in Jalisco,” perhaps based on the same trip when he visited Ajijic, won top honors at the 1957 Arizona State Fair and was named “Painting of the Year.”

Ad, Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 December, 1955

Mark Allen Coomer was the son of Dr. and Mrs Ward E. Coomer of Bay City, Michigan. He attended Handy High School, where his art teacher was Miss Irene Tryon.

The Ajijic market painting had been completed at the artist’s studio in Galena, Illinois. It was painted in black and white casein paint, to which oil colors had then been applied. The entire painting had been coated with a “plastic protective glaze” which made the painting washable. Coomer almost invariably prepared his own custom frames; the frame for this painting was “weathered wood” from a 60-year-old barn in Wisconsin.

After high school, Coomer continued his art studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and with Paul Honore, a noted Detroit mural painter. In addition to working in several different locations in the U.S., Coomer also loved to travel overseas.

His first recorded solo show (of watercolors) was at Woodmere Gallery in Philadelphia in 1945. His work was included in the 15th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago at the Art Institute in 1946, and he exhibited regularly in Chicago and other cities.

His early exhibitions, mostly of watercolors, included paintings of Cape Ann and the Atlantic Coast, and of Mexican scenes, painted during the winter of 1946-47, when he visited Taxco. He revisited Taxco and Mexico City in 1950.

In 1951 he was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to go to Europe and paint pictures of the Air Force in action. By this time, demand was such that he was using some of his original works to make serigraphs (limited edition prints on silk). He also produced many washable prints that were made on Masonite.

The multi-talented Coomer became particularly well known for urban scenes, village scenes and portraits. Besides making his own bespoke frames, he also did some work for the Evansville Courier & Press, illustrated books, fabrics and furniture, and completed several mural assignments.

Coomer spent his later life in Arizona, and died in Prescott, Arizona, in 2004.

Sources

• The Bay City Times (Michigan): 20 November 1955, 3.
• The Arizona Republic: 15 March 1959, 40.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Tony Burton

Tony Burton’s books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran”), “Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008).

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