painter

The images on this website show paintings and drawings made by R N Clarke. These paintings and drawings form a body of work covering the thirty year period 1978 to 2008.

Paintings are of religious (Christian) and landscape subjects. The locations of most settings or subjects of paintings are to be found in the county of Staffordshire, England. There are also a number of paintings based on subjects located in and around the North Wales town of Llandudno. Paintings were made in the knowledge that they would sit outside the contemporary art establishment notion of what art should be. Each painting was made in response to experience of living within a certain context, was conceived within and informed by a set of held values and beliefs, and was made in relation to visual art objects made by others in the past.

Each painting was painted on to a specially prepared ground laid on linen canvas and each painting was made using handmade oil paint. Paint was applied in layers. These layers exploit the potential of transparent and semi-transparent glazes. Broken and sometimes scumbled marks, as well as flat areas of paint, were used in the building up of each picture surface. Occasionally and where appropriate paint was applied in a light impasto.

Most drawings were made directly from observation and the majority of landscape drawings were made in preparation for painting. Generally drawings were made using pencil, often working on handmade paper.

Hopefully the images shown give sufficient idea of what the original paintings and drawings are like.

The 'Writings' were written by R N Clarke as a response to ideas or apologies put forward to justify contemporary art establishment theory and practice.

R N Clarke has lived for most of his life in Staffordshire. He was born in 1953 in the cathedral city of Lichfield and was brought up in the coal mining village of Hazel Slade, which is situated to the south of Cannock Chase, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. After leaving school he completed a one year art Foundation Course at Stafford College and went on to study Fine Art (Painting) at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham. R N Clarke now lives in Stafford. He is married and has two daughters.