Mark Soderling refers to the outdoors as his studio. He has painted at roughly 30 locations throughout the Dane County area, and beyond, and finds himself coming back to those locations every so often to paint new and spontaneous abstractions of the same outdoor scene. 

Soderling's solo exhibition "Expressions of Home" will be up at Carnelian Art Gallery until the end of August as part of its summer show. The works in Soderling's exhibition include the Capitol Square, as well as The Duck Pond, home of the Madison Mallards baseball team, and even Hyde's Mill in Iowa County. All of the artworks are oil paints on canvases. 

"I sort of have an idea of what's going on," Soderling said while painting a scene of Lake Mendota at Marshall Park earlier this week. "Things change because of the clouds and because of the light. The boats coming in and out. It's a boat landing."

He used paint brushes to conjure up the landscape of the scene, but a palette knife to create representations of rocks. 

"I have been painting in Madison for the last 10 years, and I've just kind of collected great places to paint," he said of the outdoors being his chosen workspace. "I usually have my car so its places that I can jump off of my car to. Downtown is really nice because it has parking ramps. And I really like painting water so I come to various parks on Lake Monona and Lake Mendota.

"I really like the reflection. If you have just grass and the sky, the paint can become really divided. But when you have water, it reflects the clouds and the sky and becomes a more dynamic painting."

Soderling enjoys painting around the Madison area and parts of Wisconsin so much likely because he's a native Madisonian. He also likens art to a sport. 

"I'm a West High School kid," he said. "I had really good art teachers before growing up.

"I was into sports a lot when I was younger. I was a hockey player. That's an aspect of painting that I really like. It's almost like a sport. It's a little adventure and you never know what's coming."

The artist went on to study illustration at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He then got his graduate degree from the University of New Hampshire in 2011. During that time, Soderling's art style evolved from photo-realistic illustrations to more abstract representations of landscapes and still-lifes. 

Of being in Carnelian Art Gallery's July-August show, Soderling said he's excited to have his friends and family see his work. He hasn't shown in the area since 2006. 

"Everyons is so nice at Carnelian," he said.