About
Brian-Michael-Clarke
Brian Michael Clarke is a British artist whose practice encompasses printmaking, painting and sculpture with drawing at its heart. Since the 1970s he has been developing a distinctive language of layered mark-making; which is a not only a vehicle for expression in terms of space and form but also of time, perception and memory.
He often works in series; in that way he can develop a language of forms and marks which can respond back and forth between each other. Each new intervention in the drawing shapes and reforms the marks already laid down, casts them in a new light, and summons up the promise of new ideas to pursue. In this manner his practice evolves in a self-sustaining and exploratory feedback of visual ideas.
Monoprints and etchings have formed a large part of his oeuvre and their capacity for reiteration and evolution in mark-making have helped to give voice to his artistic project; they have suited his tendency toward expression in layered and recapitulated forms, in series, and in the evolution of ‘states’. More recently, Brian Michael Clarke has revisited stone lithograhy – a medium he first engaged with decades ago – and taken up carborundum printmaking – a bold and expressive medium which forces the artist to work in a brave new way.
While the artist has worked, to date, predominantly in two-dimensional media, he has always had a strong sense of three-dimensional space – which imbues his drawing with the structure and nuance of rich perception.
We are pleased to be able to present to you a small selection of Brian Michael Clarke’s work; which, while only comprising a fraction of his output, clearly illustrates his singular vision – a distinctive voice within British contemporary art.
