Untitled (Stages of Grief) , Etching

 In 1862, the Poet and Critic Baudelaire praised Etching as a direct means of communication with the artist themselves, noting that the medium allowed the viewer to gaze into the artists most intimate personality. He described Etching as ‘a profound and dangerous art, filled with treachery, which reveals the faults of an artist’s mind as clearly as his virtues’.

I use Etching as a vehicle for my subject matter as it allows me personally to explore flaws in myself and encourages a surrender to the process. Etchings often bring an essence of naturalist documentation to artwork, lead by their capacity for detail, forged and charged by the delicate line. It is this line that caresses objects so closely, hewn in metal, that allows us to feel the intimacy and seduction of the subject matter, that to me is sometimes if not always autobiographical. My imagery renders provocative scenes that are at once abject, erotic, seductive and haunting, containing fantastical and occasionally mythological overtones, surreal and ambiguous in their strangeness.

The Divided Self Exhibition

Exhibition celebrating the work of Female Identifying artists, featuring works by me, Olivia Hicks, Beatrice Haines, Ione Rucquoi, Zoe Simon, Rachel Louise Brown, Sarah Gilliam, Sara Trillo, Laura Funmi Oyewale, Claire Undy and Jessie Jetpacks

HOME SWEET HOME - online exhibition

Home Sweet home is an online exhibition featuring an eclectic mix of artists whose practice naturally engages with the theme of The Domestic. The exhibition will exist predominantly on Instagram on the @rentedbythehour account and will run for just over 2 weeks featuring one
artists work per day. Direct access with photography and film is gained into the artists private homes where their autobiographical responses to lockdown will be recorded.
This subject matter to this exhibition was chosen due to the extra time everyone is spending at home as well as the repetitive language and actions we are being fed daily via the media/government; "Stay Home", "Lockdown" “Save Lives” etc and how this enters our consciousness as artists/human beings.

Many thanks to Assistant Director of the London Original Print Fair, Caroline Manganaro, for including me as one of your 'Ones to watch...'

 

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Review written about 'An Honest Woman', a piece I will be exhibiting at the Woolwich Print Fair in October. By the brilliant Sophie Hill, blogger at postcardwall.wordpress.com

Etchings often bring an essence of naturalist documentation to artwork, lead by their infinite capacity for detail, forged by the delicate line. It is this line that caresses objects so closely, focusing our attention on each component of Clarke’s compositions. Leading our eye thus, the subjects of her work gather a collective and poignant resonance, humming almost in their concentration of detail. This concentration is then spiked, tipped over to a raw seduction, as we realise the provocative subjects of her scenes. In An Honest Woman the intimacy of a shrouded clearing is scattered with haunting symbols that pinch the viewer’s gaze – nudity spilling out of open legs. A woman hangs, deadly still, though it is at the mercy of her own hands that she swings – curiously, from a large severed forearm with curling fingers – her feet digging into the soft flesh of an incomplete body. Smaller bodies are kept in the shadows of the foliage, slanting eyes caught in the flow and rush of earth as it cascades down to the pit of the painting, while a rat-like creature surveys the situation, clutching its jaw, its eye bright with a gleam. This scene, that scratches away at our imagination with descriptive and fantastically leading lines, is then calmed, soothed, by the placidly flat distant mountains.

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I have a few pieces of work showing and for sale at the Woolwich Print Fair.

The show runs from Friday 20th October - Monday 23rd October 11 - 5pm. PV Friday at 6pm.