Marcus, who works as marcus_cuscus, is a digital artist working in 3D. His pieces have the solidity and tactility of photographs of an elaborately staged diorama or a snapshot from a theatre production, each one paired with an original rhyming poem.He has described himself as a “3D doodle maker & silly rhyme puker”.
His artistic education is grounded in stagecraft. He was majoring in industrial engineering when he enrolled in a community theater class, and the experience led him to switch majors into acting. He still builds his 3D pieces as though they were scenes on a stage. The poems that accompany his pieces gradually became part of what drew him to 3D as his preferred medium of expression.
While working at a diaper company and struggling to make a living from commercial art gigs, Marcus entered the NFT space after seeing other artists on Instagram describe selling digital work this way. His influences range from the painters Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Albrecht Dürer and Remedios Varo to medieval manuscripts, mythology and childhood pop culture like Lego and Where's Waldo books. His work follows two lines, one with defined rules of style and composition he plays within, and an experimental line where trial and error occasionally builds into new pieces. One piece in his series Death On Top Series draws on the setting of a gym to explore social pressure and the danger of building a “thick skin” to shield one's vulnerability, pairing merry, colorful imagery with a darker undertone.
