Born in Bombay in 1931 of British parents.
Mark King is the product of an exotic and privileged upbringing in India, where he lived until the age of sixteen. In 1948, following graduation from La Martiniere College in Calcutta, where his focus had been botany as well as art, King sailed to England to attend Bournemouth College of Art, having determined to pursue painting, sculpture, architecture and theatre design. He subsequently spent seven years as Resident scenic designer at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre, but in 1961 decided to concentrate on painting and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole and the Louvre.

Mark King uses his eyes as a passive organ, confronting the visual field.Objective and detached, he considers himself an "unobserved observer" .He explains that he makes no judgments about what he sees…there s no right or wrong…. it is there to be assimilated. Mark King believes that when there s no jamming of the cosmic forces influencing our receptivity, those energies and forces feed into us and it is those briefest fractions of a second when things flow.