about catherine clark
Art is a good obsession. It keeps me in the present.
To start to understand me you have to know, my mother was from Rio, Brazil, and my Father, a small Durham coal mining village on the river Derwent. The cultural differences are vast. I am Irish, French, Spanish and South American. I have studied HND Textile Fine Art at Cornwall College. BA(hon) Fine Art at University College Falmouth which I left in 2008.
Most recently I have fallen in to a style of painting which is imperfect, and I like it that way. I cover the canvas with colour. “There is no blue without yellow and without orange” Vincent Van Gogh. This is my first painting. Then I start a narrative on top. At the moment I am in all my pictures telling stories about the everyday. Cooking, cleaning, washing up, relationships, things I find funny and some more serious.
“If I create from the heart nearly everything works, if from the head almost nothing.”
MARC CHAGALL
I like the speed of Acrylic paint and being able to move the painting on quickly, concluding when I like. To long in my 20 years of looking and mark making have I strived for the perfect and have never found it. Today I don’t want the critic on my shoulder stopping me from starting. Now I use a stick to map out the narrative and colour in where necessary. I try not to tell everything as some things are obvious.
I wouldn’t say I am happy to ruin any of my works but I want to be. I am coming to find that painting is where I am present.