Marq Sutherland, born in San Diego, California, in 1974, grew up in an artistic family. In 1998 he became assistant to contemporary landscape painter Woody Gwyn and began his photographic studies with David Scheinbaum and Steve Fitch at the College of Santa Fe, graduating in 2001 with a self-designed BA in photography, music and technology. He continued his studies with Jack Fulton at the San Francisco Art Institute receiving an MFA in 2005. Sutherland was a finalist for the 2002 Willard Van Dyke Award, and received a SFAI Teaching Assistantship Award in 2004 and a Helen Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship in 2008. He now lives and works in Bilbao, Spain.