Daniel Clarke is an American artist born in New-York in 1971. He is a painter, sculptor and also works with multiples: lithographs and woodcuts. During his first year at university, he chose
mathematics as his main discipline, and drawing was one of his secondary subjects.Very quickly, this practice became obvious. With nothing destined for it, he decided to make it his specialty and obtained a BA in painting from Yale University in 1993.
Daniel Clarke exhibits across Europe and the United States. His achievements are shown at
prestigious fairs (Paris, London, Karlsruhe, Berlin, Bologna, in Switzerland, Belgium, and in
the United States: New York, Miami and Los Angeles). His work is part of several private and
public collections, notably that of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the Maeght
Foundation in Saint-Paul de Vence.
The artist's work has been the subject of several catalogs enriched by analyzes of leading art
critics such as Anna Lisa Rimmando, Monteburan, Moritz Sheyer, Richard Leydier, Anne Malherbe, Gwinherm Perthuis, Helen Carey.
From his first exhibitions, Daniel Clarke asserted himself as a figurative artist. His paintings and drawings feature people he knew personally, family and friends. He used photographs of his models as a way to jump-start his work. He aimed at reproducing the general impression both in form and in atmosphere. Far from wanting to reproduce like a copy, he uses photography as a support to then introduce his own sensitivity. It highlights a gentle form of everyday intimacy, almost banal in its simplicity, mixed with strangeness. His characters as if caught in suspended time seem to turn in themselves, in a formof reverie, of introspection. This apparent calm, this almost worrying absence from the viewer's gaze is highlighted by vibrant colors that catch the eye. These pastels and oil paintings artouching with their assumed freshness and the strength of their compositions.
In recent years, in the work of Daniel Clarke, a process of detachment from representation of a visible reality has been gradually taking place. He feels the need to listen to, to become
attached to the figures, the shapes, the ideas that come up in his mind. Little by little his
work shifts from the figurative towards a freer, less narrative expression. At the same time,
the artist conducts a work of introspection that leads to the emergence of images, ideas and
thoughts in connection with his family history, the country of origin of his ancestors, Ireland.
Everything is intertwined, family memories, the history of Ireland, its myths and legends, the
humain condition more generally. Nevertheless, his compositions are less the result of an initial idea than of progressive manifestation of a subject through graphic execution. In his studio, he surrounds himself with objects that feed his creative imagination. He relies on an assiduous
practice of drawing on paper, his favorite subject, as a necessary step in his creative process.
This work, feed from a pre-conceived creative thought, takes the artist into the
representation of a mysterious universe for us, which we could neither qualify as figurative nor abstract. The shapes cross the canvas, as if they had left an imprint on it, as if the work was
stepping out of the frame. It leaves the field open to the viewer to find meaning, relate to a
sensation, an emotion, recognize themselves in it or discover the artist himself.