Mark Braunias was born in Tauranga, New Zealand. He lives and works in the small coastal village of Kawhia, in the North Island’s King Country. Braunias studied at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, graduating in 1987. His first solo show took place at Jonathan Smart Gallery in 1988. He was the inaugural winner of the Wallace Art Award in 1992, and from 1993 - 2013 he tutored at the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland. In 2011, Braunias was awarded a Fulbright/Wallace scholarship to take up a residency at the Headlands Centre for the Arts in San Francisco.

His work is held in major public, corporate and private collections in New Zealand and overseas. Braunias has exhibited in various public gallery exhibitions including: A Very Peculiar Practice, City Gallery Wellington (1995); Gruesome, Robert McDougall Art Gallery Christchurch (1999); The Cartoon Show, Auckland Art Gallery (2001); First Time Caller, Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2002); Congo / Sly Grogger, Southland Museum and Art Gallery (2005); Visual Bank, The Tauranga Art Gallery (2007); London Town, The Sarjeant Gallery Whanganui (2008); Children’s Charter, The Christchurch Art Gallery (2010); The Archivists, The Sarjeant Gallery Whanganui (2014); Art Central Hong Kong (2015).