GRAHAM CLARKE
Graham Clarke, artist, author and humorist, is one of Britain's most popular and best-selling printmakers. He has created some five hundred images of rural life and history, and of his own humorous view of the world. Born in 1941, Clarke's upbringing in the austerity of war-time and post-war Britain, made him reliant on his own imaginative resources. Responding to the comedy of everyday life, he brings his own unique brand of humour to his interpretation of past and present history through the eyes of the common man.
He was educated at Beckenham Art School, where he fell under the spell of Samuel Palmer's romantic and visionary view of the Shoreham countryside. At the Royal College of Art he specialised in illustration and printmaking, and pursued his interest in calligraphy. With encouragement from Edward Bawden, Graham began refining an individual aesthetic, printing traditional landscapes marked by a sense of locality and genre. Graduating in 1964, he benefited from the print boom of the decade and, with commissions from Editions Alecto and London Transport Publicity Department a promising career was launched. The publication in 1969 of his first hand-printed "livre d'artiste", Balyn and Balan won recognition from the most influential patron and connoisseur of the day, Kenneth Clark. Lord Clark also wrote enthusiastically in praise of Vision of Wat Tyler: "the whole book is a splendid assertion that craftsmen still exist and cannot be killed by materialism. A few idealists are the only hope for decent values".
He has attracted universal admiration for his revival of beautiful, hand-coloured prints in the tradition of Thomas Rowlandson. The famous ‘arched top’ etchings, with which Graham Clarke established a widely successful reputation in Britain and overseas, came to public attention in 1973 when the first of these, Dance by the Light of the Moon, was exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, and sold out.
Examples of his work are held by public and Royal collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and the National Library of Scotland in the United Kingdom, as well as by Trinity College, Dublin, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the New York Public Library and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Many more are to be found on the walls of private homes all over the world, collected systematically by devotees, as well as singly by ordinary art lovers who "know what they like". For over forty years Clarke has sustained a remarkable evolutionary development of his work, while remaining true to a philosophy of life and to a democratic ideal which he began formulating as a schoolboy.
His books, Graham Clarke's ‘History of England’, Graham Clarke's ‘Grand Tour’ and ‘Joe Carpenter & Son, An English Nativity’, were published by Phaidon Press. The latter, a verse play, now having been performed many hundreds of times in churches and schools worldwide. His 'discovery' of ‘W. Shakespeare Gent. His Actuale Nottebooke’ saw the publication of a quite different work in 1992. This has been followed by ‘Engelskmann I Lofoten’ a Norwegian Sketchbook in 1996. Spring 2000 saw the publication of 'Bait Box Stew', sketches and notes from his beloved Cornwall, and 'KENT', a collection of watercolours on his home territory. April 2004 saw the publication of ‘Octopolis to Halki’ with a marvellous book launch on the tiny Greek Island itself. His most recent book ‘Vinerelles’, is not just about wine but actually uses it in the artwork. Two further books are currently in preparation.
In August 1993 Graham was made a Chevalier de la Confrerie du Ceps Ardechois in his favourite part of Southern France, he was also given an Honoury Degree by the University of Kent. In 1999 he became an official ambassador for the County of Kent, a role which he pursues with much enthusiasm. More recently he was pleased to be asked to become President of the C.P.R.E. (Kent) who’s work for the countryside he loves becomes evermore important. For the last twelve years his work has taken him regularly to Japan where it is said he has become that country's most popular British artist. In October 1994 The Graham Clarke Studio and Salon opened in central Osaka, a gallery, meeting place and permanent collection, devoted to Clarke works and 'philosophy', the outward expression of a Japanese collector's enthusiasm. At the same time Kodansha, Japan's largest book publisher, issued ‘The World of Graham Clarke’, an introduction and explanation of eighty Clarke etchings in Japanese. A following work ‘Graham Clarke’s Recent Works’ appeared in 2004.
A major project, Graham Clarke’s Millennium window is to be seen in his own parish church of Boughton Monchelsea, Kent. It is unique in that it involves light and sound as well as the stained glass itself. During the year 2000 he produced a large composite wood carving ‘The Gloucester Nativity’. Gloucester Cathedral is its home but it is designed to travel and formed the centrepiece at Clarke’s retrospective exhibition held at The Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury in 2001.
His large etching ‘All the World in London’ was produced at the suggestion of the Olympic bid committee. Graham likes to think it made a contribution towards the successful outcome. A copy hangs in the Olympic Museum in Geneva.
May 2007 marked the 400th Anniversary of the foundation of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the New World. Graham has commemorated this with his etching ‘Nexus’.
Graham has had a long and happy association with Norway. While working in Stavanger on a new book, he was asked to be the English commentator/observer as Stavanger approaches its role as European City of Culture in 2008. The initial contribution appeared as eight double page spreads in the much respected newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad.
The book was launched in Stavanger during November 2007 to coincide with a major exhibition at Stavanger Kunstforenning (Art Society). The responses by Norwegians to Graham having fun at their expense was very positive indeed.
Graham Clarke is a man with an overriding sense of tradition and of social and historical continuities. Although internationally recognised, he takes pride in his view of himself as a local man, a "Man of Kent", with a firm faith in the peace and stability of family, home and community. As such, life and art have always been interdependent, mutually sustaining activities. With the extraordinary rapid technical developments in fine art reproduction used by so many others, he feels ever more convinced that works produced entirely by hand using traditional processes have a splendid and secure future. His wife Wendy, his four children, his animals and friends, the cottage industry he maintains in the village of Boughton Monchelsea where he lives, his comedy band, and the surrounding landscape, offer a microcosm of the world and its history. The scenes he depicts represent both for him and for his ever-widening audience, an idyll and a universal ideal.
Graham Clarke, artist, author and humorist, is one of Britain's most popular and best-selling printmakers. He has created some five hundred images of rural life and history, and of his own humorous view of the world. Born in 1941, Clarke's upbringing in the austerity of war-time and post-war Britain, made him reliant on his own imaginative resources. Responding to the comedy of everyday life, he brings his own unique brand of humour to his interpretation of past and present history through the eyes of the common man.
He was educated at Beckenham Art School, where he fell under the spell of Samuel Palmer's romantic and visionary view of the Shoreham countryside. At the Royal College of Art he specialised in illustration and printmaking, and pursued his interest in calligraphy. With encouragement from Edward Bawden, Graham began refining an individual aesthetic, printing traditional landscapes marked by a sense of locality and genre. Graduating in 1964, he benefited from the print boom of the decade and, with commissions from Editions Alecto and London Transport Publicity Department a promising career was launched. The publication in 1969 of his first hand-printed "livre d'artiste", Balyn and Balan won recognition from the most influential patron and connoisseur of the day, Kenneth Clark. Lord Clark also wrote enthusiastically in praise of Vision of Wat Tyler: "the whole book is a splendid assertion that craftsmen still exist and cannot be killed by materialism. A few idealists are the only hope for decent values".
He has attracted universal admiration for his revival of beautiful, hand-coloured prints in the tradition of Thomas Rowlandson. The famous ‘arched top’ etchings, with which Graham Clarke established a widely successful reputation in Britain and overseas, came to public attention in 1973 when the first of these, Dance by the Light of the Moon, was exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, and sold out.
Examples of his work are held by public and Royal collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and the National Library of Scotland in the United Kingdom, as well as by Trinity College, Dublin, the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, the New York Public Library and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Many more are to be found on the walls of private homes all over the world, collected systematically by devotees, as well as singly by ordinary art lovers who "know what they like". For over forty years Clarke has sustained a remarkable evolutionary development of his work, while remaining true to a philosophy of life and to a democratic ideal which he began formulating as a schoolboy.
His books, Graham Clarke's ‘History of England’, Graham Clarke's ‘Grand Tour’ and ‘Joe Carpenter & Son, An English Nativity’, were published by Phaidon Press. The latter, a verse play, now having been performed many hundreds of times in churches and schools worldwide. His 'discovery' of ‘W. Shakespeare Gent. His Actuale Nottebooke’ saw the publication of a quite different work in 1992. This has been followed by ‘Engelskmann I Lofoten’ a Norwegian Sketchbook in 1996. Spring 2000 saw the publication of 'Bait Box Stew', sketches and notes from his beloved Cornwall, and 'KENT', a collection of watercolours on his home territory. April 2004 saw the publication of ‘Octopolis to Halki’ with a marvellous book launch on the tiny Greek Island itself. His most recent book ‘Vinerelles’, is not just about wine but actually uses it in the artwork. Two further books are currently in preparation.
In August 1993 Graham was made a Chevalier de la Confrerie du Ceps Ardechois in his favourite part of Southern France, he was also given an Honoury Degree by the University of Kent. In 1999 he became an official ambassador for the County of Kent, a role which he pursues with much enthusiasm. More recently he was pleased to be asked to become President of the C.P.R.E. (Kent) who’s work for the countryside he loves becomes evermore important. For the last twelve years his work has taken him regularly to Japan where it is said he has become that country's most popular British artist. In October 1994 The Graham Clarke Studio and Salon opened in central Osaka, a gallery, meeting place and permanent collection, devoted to Clarke works and 'philosophy', the outward expression of a Japanese collector's enthusiasm. At the same time Kodansha, Japan's largest book publisher, issued ‘The World of Graham Clarke’, an introduction and explanation of eighty Clarke etchings in Japanese. A following work ‘Graham Clarke’s Recent Works’ appeared in 2004.
A major project, Graham Clarke’s Millennium window is to be seen in his own parish church of Boughton Monchelsea, Kent. It is unique in that it involves light and sound as well as the stained glass itself. During the year 2000 he produced a large composite wood carving ‘The Gloucester Nativity’. Gloucester Cathedral is its home but it is designed to travel and formed the centrepiece at Clarke’s retrospective exhibition held at The Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury in 2001.
His large etching ‘All the World in London’ was produced at the suggestion of the Olympic bid committee. Graham likes to think it made a contribution towards the successful outcome. A copy hangs in the Olympic Museum in Geneva.
May 2007 marked the 400th Anniversary of the foundation of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English-speaking settlement in the New World. Graham has commemorated this with his etching ‘Nexus’.
Graham has had a long and happy association with Norway. While working in Stavanger on a new book, he was asked to be the English commentator/observer as Stavanger approaches its role as European City of Culture in 2008. The initial contribution appeared as eight double page spreads in the much respected newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad.
The book was launched in Stavanger during November 2007 to coincide with a major exhibition at Stavanger Kunstforenning (Art Society). The responses by Norwegians to Graham having fun at their expense was very positive indeed.
Graham Clarke is a man with an overriding sense of tradition and of social and historical continuities. Although internationally recognised, he takes pride in his view of himself as a local man, a "Man of Kent", with a firm faith in the peace and stability of family, home and community. As such, life and art have always been interdependent, mutually sustaining activities. With the extraordinary rapid technical developments in fine art reproduction used by so many others, he feels ever more convinced that works produced entirely by hand using traditional processes have a splendid and secure future. His wife Wendy, his four children, his animals and friends, the cottage industry he maintains in the village of Boughton Monchelsea where he lives, his comedy band, and the surrounding landscape, offer a microcosm of the world and its history. The scenes he depicts represent both for him and for his ever-widening audience, an idyll and a universal ideal.
