Joanne Clarke

Joanne was recently featured in Arabella magazine.
Click here to see and read the article.

Joanne Clarke has exhibited professionally since 1980. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree from the University Of Toronto she worked in a science field for several years before returning to art and painting which she had been immersed in as a child and adolescent. While she studied various art programs at The Ontario College Of Art, Art Sake Inc., and The Schneider School Of Fine Art she considers herself to be primarily self-taught. Her maturity as an artist has been an evolution based on experimentation, initiative, curiosity, discipline, observation, reading, dreaming and attention to process. She also believes that her science background has contributed to her evolution as an artist----an altered depth.

Born in Ontario and resident of the greater Toronto area since 1963. She now lives and works in Grimsby, ON . Longstanding, elected member of The Ontario Society of Artists (1987) and former elected member of The Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour (1984) . She is represented in more than 100 corporate and public collections.

Artist Statement

In the thirty years that I have been exhibiting professionally, the philosophy behind the work has remained steadfast—to paint what I have observed and experienced and what has sparked an emotional rapport. I need to create and bring to the viewer images that are visually delicious and enhancing to the spirit. Colour, texture and atmosphere are very important to me as I try to distill all the things that influence me into an essence of place.

Various periods have seen me focus on the intimacy of the forest or the organized chaos of my large perennial garden; at other times I have focused on the bigger landscape picture---distance, space, hills, fields,relationships--land ,sky and water. Variations on these themes have enabled me to reinvent my style and to indulge in the need for change.

My large perennial garden has been an ongoing source of inspiration, reference and influence for all my work. Previous exhibitions and some current work have been more influenced by travel, but the garden feeds my interest in using colour as optical drama and in using complexity within the more simplified whole. Things happen in the garden that touch our senses on many levels. Here are opulence, excitement, serenity and humour to see and feel, and fragrance and touch to experience. I wish to convey that sense of awe and reverence I experience in the garden and which transfers to the larger landscape.

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