Michael Clark is an artist whose work I have long loved. Born in Ayr in 1959, he has won many coveted awards including the 2005 Art Hire Prize at Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition, the 2007 Art Hire Prize at the Scottish Drawing Competition, the 2007 and 2008 Wren Gallery Awards for Still Life Painting at the Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition, and the 2010 Winsor and Newton Award at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour. He was also a runner up in the 2003 Kennox (Aspect) Painting Prize and was selected for the 2007 Sunday Times/Singer Friedlander Watercolour Prize. He exhibits all over the UK but primarily in Edinburgh and London. He was elected as a Professional Member of Visual Arts Scotland in 2003, an Artist Member of Paisley Art Institute in 2003, and an Artist Member Glasgow Art Club in 2007.
Around ten years ago, he was painting beautiful and striking oil depictions of flowers where the primary colours leapt out from the canvas and you could almost smell the heady fragrance in the air. His vibrant colours were immediately captivating and his technique was also bold, with broad, confident brush-strokes forming alluring impressionistic images. Details such as flower stems were often omitted to give the vividly bright flowerheads even more impact; it was all about colour and impressions. Having one of these paintings in the home was like permanently having the most exquisite bouquet forever blooming in your room. Unsurprisingly, the commercial potential of these gorgeous images was recognised by others and his work soon became available as printed greetings cards.
Around 2004 – 2005, Michael started traveling abroad to paint, and in 2005 an exhibition of his paintings from Paris and Barcelona was shown in Edinburgh. These paintings were largely a departure from his still lifes although he didn’t abandon these completely, painting occasional bowls of lemons and Seville oranges. However, most of the paintings were of places he’d fallen in love with in these two cities. The Placa Reial in Barcelona was depicted in glowing colours, the yellow buildings contrasting with a clear blue sky and the pink of the ground, with shadows cast in purple. Like the Fauves such as Matisse, Michael doesn’t use colour in a way that is constrained by reality but employs it to bring places alive, his imagination and eye marrying shades that make the images mesmeric.
Among my favourite paintings in that show in 2005 were the stark, sparse depictions of the Tuileries gardens in Paris. There was something haunting about those images, the long, spindly tree trunks stretching, bare and unadorned, into the air, leaf covering having been lost in autumn and winter and not yet regained. The colours of the Tuileries paintings were much less bright than Michael’s other work but the wintery shades added to the atmosphere and mystery of the pictures.
I was very pleased to see more Tuileries paintings in Michael’s current exhibition, A Very French Affair, showing now at the RGI (Royal Glasgow Institute) Kelly Gallery in Glasgow. This show contrasts Michael’s paintings from Paris, which are urban and monochromatic, painted almost in muted colours and exhibiting a striking chiaroscuro - almost like black and white photos - with ones created in the rural south-west of France, where the sun and colours sing from the canvas. It’s amazing how the colour choices capture the feel of these two such different areas of France. Paris is a bustling city where you almost don’t notice the weather. The mood there is of city life but doused with the style and panache of the French sophisticate. One of the Parisian paintings shows a building in St Germain where the sombre, dun colour is enlivened by only a splash of colour from blue shutters.
Several of the Paris paintings show dresses hanging on invisible mannequins in shop windows. Unlike the cheap, garish explosion you see in chain shop windows on any British high street, the ones in Paris are more artisan, more reserved, more chic, and largely in creams or dark colours. My favourite of these window dress paintings is the one showing a line of wedding dresses, Wedding Dresses, St Germain. The dresses are almost dancing in the window; you can almost sense the young French women subsequently wearing these to their big day. They are alive with possibility and promise.
The paintings from the south-west rural areas of France look wildly colourful in comparison. In one, a building flaunts aquamarine shutters and a purple roof while the building itself is shown in hues of pink, yellow and pale green as well as cream. In Restaurant D’Abbaye, the burnished orange building captures perfectly the feeling of brick baking in the heat, and the olive chairs and linen tablecloths bear testament to the departed diners. Hotel near Puymirol boasts a red roof and turquise shutters against a blazing yellow sky, with soothing green trees in the garden. In Le Marie, Montjoi, red window shutters open against a cream building lapped by leaves from an overhanging tree. In Chateau Bastide, delicate pink metal chairs face each other, as if deep in conversation, against the backdrop of a cool grey-green building with blue window shutters and verdant leaves hanging against the walls. It’s either dawn or dusk, since the sun is not bearing down, and you can almost feel the fresh breath of the beginning or end of the day seeping from the air. The aura emitted bythese rural south-west France paintings is of the good, simple life of sunshine and fine food and wine richly enjoyed, and a slower pace of life than in the capital city.
Michael Clark’s paintings transport the viewer to other lands and conjure up memories tinged with joy and nostalgia. If I could, I would snap up at least three of these paintings immediately: the largest Tuileries one, the dancing wedding dresses, and one of the colour-soaked south-west ones.
Some of Michael’s paintings may be seen on his website:
http://michaelclarkartist.co.uk
A Very French Affair is on at the RGI Kelly Gallery, 118 Douglas Street, Glasgow G2 4ET, tel 0141 334 6352, until 26th June.
