Sexta Feira

Sexta Feira is made up of acrylic on canvas paintings that have Clarke's trademark layering of colours and lines. There is a process of revealing and obscuring which leads the viewer along monumental movements and subtle passages. The viwer is being exposed to infinite space, and then quickly brought back to ground, literally the ground and surface and reality of seductively wrought paint on canvas.

The all-over layering of lines in Clarke's most recent work is reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, but there is also a look of carved and hewn paint application, which has similarities to the later figure paintings of Willem de Kooning. In the same way Pollock, de Kooning and their contemporaries defined the vocabulary, the meaning of paint, to relate to their time, Clarke is both building upon the historical vocabulary of abstract painting and re-inventing it, so that it has a contemporary, resonating relevance.