Jeff
Clarke R.E. at 80 and beyond
A Retrospective of his prints
and selection of his most recent work
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Jeff Clarke in his upstairs Oxford studio |
Jeff Clarke, now 87, is not only still working in his studio daily but continuing to branch out, as a printmaker, in investigating new matrices and ways of bringing colour into his prints. A small selection of his prints produced in the last seven years has been added at the end of this exhibition,
and new work will continue to be added.
Also, within that period Jeff, has acquired a dedicated website: Jeff Clarke Art, where his paintings, pastels and drawings can also be seen.
Jeff
Clarke, at 80, is not only still working in
his studio daily but branching out, as a printmaker,
in investigating new matrices and ways of bringing
colour into his prints.
Jeff
was born in Brighton, and, naturally, attended
Brighton Art School as it then was, from 1952
to 1956, gaining the National Diploma in Design
and Painting. Wood engraving was part of the
syllabus as a craft and was Jeff’s initial
introduction to printmaking, but was soon superseded
in interest by etching, under the influential
tutelage of ‘Dick’ Cowern (Raymond
Teague Cowern) who ran the Brighton etching room.
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The Brighton etching room, photograph c1947, Dick Cowern presiding.
Another of Cowern’s students, contemporary with this photograph, Michael Blaker R.E., has recalled
“in the etching-room, among the surgical-like needles and burnishers, the finely polished mirror-surfaces of copper, R T Cowern was high priest in his blue smock”. |
Cowern belonged to that last generation of etching postgraduate students at the Royal College of Art in the 1930’s instructed by Malcolm Osborne and Robert Austin in the continuing tradition of Frank Short, the first Professor of Engraving at the RCA. Short had trained several generations of etchers (including both Osborne and Austin) who would contribute to the Etching Revival, or the following Etching Boom of the early decades of the 20th century. At the RCA Cowern had preferred etching outdoors from nature and as a teacher encouraged his own students to needle the grounded plate directly in front of the motif. Students at the RCA were encouraged to enter as candidates for the Prix de Rome Scholarship. Cowern’s own potential three year tenure as a Rome Scholar was effectively cut short after two years by the outbreak of the Second World War.
Though
even by the 1930’s the etching boom was largely over and in the immediate Post-War years many artists, including Cowern himself in his own work, abandoned the medium, as a teacher Cowern continued to inspire his students in the etching room at Brighton and motivate them to try for the Prix
de Rome in Engraving and other awards.
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Jeff
Clarke: Rue Pequet, Dieppe. Etching,
1954 |
Two
years into his course at Brighton, in 1954,
Jeff Clarke was granted a Travelling award
which he used to make his first visit to Dieppe. Single impressions
of two etchings of the rue Pequet remain from that visit; the only
prints extant from Jeff’s early years.
On graduating
from Brighton in 1956, Jeff had his first solo exhibition, at Brighton
Municipal Art Gallery, and the same year won a British Institute
Fund scholarship and the Prix de Rome in engraving, spending the
following two years in Italy. In Rome he followed Cowern’s advice and visited the hilltown of Anticoli Corrado, an artist’s colony in the Abruzzi, about thirty miles out of Rome.
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Dick Cowern: The Feast of Sant’Antonio, Anticoli Corrado, etching, 1939
(For other Cowern etchings of Anticoli see the Home Page Selections) |
The
small picturesque town captured Jeff’s imagination and he stayed.
There, with no access to printmaking facilities
or a press, he abandoned printmaking and concentrated on painting
and drawing.
Rome
Scholars were entirely free to follow their own directions and inclinations,
though a predilection for draughtsmanship is usually apparent. The
scholarship was awarded largely on the strength of submitted finished
drawings.
His
student years over, Jeff settled in Oxford in 1960 to take up a
part-time teaching post at Oxford School of Art, now part of Oxford
Brookes.
From
1964 to 1973 he had five one-man shows, principally of paintings,
at the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford.
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Jeff Clarke: Burslem Wire Netting, 1970
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It was
only in 1970, when he became a visiting tutor at the Burslem School
of Art (incorporated into the North Staffordshire Polytechnic) that
he began again to make the occasional etching.
It was
a developing friendship with Terry Frost, then teaching at Reading
University, that led to a full return to etching, as to the post
of visiting tutor at Reading, where he helped Frost with printing.
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Jeff
Clarke: Untitled Abstract: Variation
on a Cruciform III.
Etching & aquatint, 1977 |
Through
the early to mid-1970’s this involvement and association led to
a period of abstraction which culminated in a show of etchings at
the Oxford Museum of Modern Art, then run by Nicholas Serota, as
well as a show at Kettles Yard in Cambridge.
Then
followed a difficult period, uncertain in direction, which was resolved
in 1979-80 when Jeff was appointed as draughtsman to the British
School of Archaeology in Athens and made the first of several regular
summer visits through the 1980’s to Crete, to record Minoan pots found in that season’s dig at Knossos . He would also go to Cyprus in this capacity.
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Jeff Clarke: Knossos Cockerel Etching, 1985 |
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Road near Knossos. Etching, c1988 |
The
harsh landscape defined by the brilliant Mediterranean
light inspired him to take up etching again, working directly on
the plate before the motif in the open air, in a return to the concrete,
to landscape, street scenes and still life objects, the ‘stuff’ of
everyday life, depicted in strong patterns of chiaroscuro, which
have continued to be his concern in printmaking ever since; themes
to which he returns constantly.
Thereafter,
back in his Oxford studio, etching became an important part of his
work and he acquired his own etching press from the then fairly
newly established firm of Rochat. Jeff’s house, a Victorian mid-terrace brick property, still has the original separate substantial two-storey building in the back garden, formerly used as a College laundry, which converted into ideal studio space on the upper floor, with a printing room beneath.
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Jeff
Clarke: Hinksey Willows. Etching, 1985 |
Through
the 1980’s alongside his Cretan plates Jeff found subjects in the local Oxford landscape, such as the willows at Hinksey, and increasingly over the years turned to studio and outdoor still life.
A collector
of modern pots and the friend of several potters, his pots, as well
as more utilitarian jugs, appear frequently in his still lives,
along with the ubiquitous onion, and apple. His still lives are
marked by both their strength of drawing the actual form of the
object and an interest in the abstract patterns of the shapes created
by chiaroscuro.
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Pots,
shapes and textures. Soft-ground etching
with open bite, 2010 |
Many
of the still lives were made in the artist’s back garden when
the right sunny conditions allowed, a garden that overflows with
flowers and pots and foliage.
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Photograph
looking down on the artist’s back garden
from the studio window (left) and another
photograph (right) taken in Jeff’s
back garden with a variety of ‘favourite’ still
life objects (cf. three variations
of Arrangement Outdoors in the exhibition).
Click for enlargements. |
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Chair, spotted jug and leaves. Etching on copper, 2014 |
At several
year intervals, from 1992 until 2011, Jeff had regular one-man shows
at Christchurch Picture Gallery in Oxford; some devoted to paintings,
pastels and drawings; others dedicated specifically to prints.
From
1996 to 1999 he was a visiting tutor at the Royal Academy Schools,
at the invitation of Len McComb RA, and at the suggestion of David
Carpanini PPRE, was elected to the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers
(the RE).
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Dieppe Roofs. Etching with aquatint. 1996 |
In 1996
a return visit to Dieppe is reflected in a
number of plates of the town’s roof ‘landscapes’, which make an
interesting comparison with the early rue Pecquet
plates.
Later
years too show a renewed interest in urban scenes in Jeff’s
locality in Oxford.
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Scuddy
Day. Cardboard relief print, 2011 (click
to enlarge) and photo taken
from the side window of Jeff’s studio
looking over the neighbouring gardens |
From
about 2005 Jeff has experimented with new materials and different
techniques offering greater freedom and broader effects. The use
of cardboard as a matrix, worked both in intaglio and relief, and
relief printing with stencils, allows changes to the image to be
made quickly, while carborundum, sandpaper and wire brushes have
an immediacy in giving tonality by contrast with the traditional
etching methods of slow linear build up or aquatint achieved through
repeated bitings in acid.
Another
recent development is the introduction of colour into Jeff’s printmaking. After having printed existing plates in warm burnt sienna and raw umber (instead of his previous usual black ink) which he found gave an increased sense of warmth to the light in the subject, about 2007 Jeff began to print some plates in full colour. He used a complex and time-consuming method which involved painting (à la poupée- like) several coloured etching inks onto the copper plate and then overprinting the colour impression with the linear image from the same plate in black ink, which resulted in a rich but sometimes slightly muted colour image.
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Outdoor
Arrangement. Colour etching, 2008 |
Since
then he has turned to aluminium plates, with bolder and simpler
lines printed over larger areas of hand-painted flat translucent
oil colours. The colours vary from impression to impression, like
a series of monotypes.
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The
White Jug, monotype and aquatint, 2014 |
Already
a colourist in his pastels, paintings and cut
paper works, in the colour etchings and relief prints the vibrant
colours, joyous or sonorous, are used to create an equivalent ‘chiaroscuro’ of
light through colour, rather than through the contrast of dark shadow
as in a monochrome print.
For
his latest monochrome prints Jeff has just started to explore the
possibilities of plastic plates, finding that the clear acrylic
sheets respond well to drypoint scraping and that roughening the
surface gives a rewarding variety of tone.
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Photograph in Jeff’s printing room, with impressions from new plastic plates of Brancaster Staithe taped to vertical boards for stretching and drying |
In the
new techniques he has largely abandoned editions,
making a succession of artist’s
proofs as the image on the cardboard takes shape
and is then changed, like a series of variations and development
on a theme. (Jeff is also a musician; both playing the organ and
until very recently singing bass in several Oxford chamber choirs.)
Often
several plates are being worked on, in different versions, simultaneously,
in a progression of states, using different printing processes,
as well as perhaps tackling the subject in paint or cut papers.
New motifs may intervene before he returns to work on previous plates.
It is
fascinating how the same plate printed by different methods or in
different colours becomes a different print.
It is
a continuing story.
Though
the technical details of the processes involved can sound complicated,
and are explained fully where appropriate alongside each print in
the exhibition, ultimately there is no need to be bogged down in
terminology.
More
important than its method of creation is the resulting image itself.
I hope
you enjoy this selection.
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The
Clarke Exhibition
To
view the entire Exhibition, print-by-print,
click this link and
then follow the prints through the Gallery
by using the "next print >" and "< previous
print" navigation
buttons. Alternatively, you can select an individual
print from its thumbnail or title in the list
below.
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Rue Pequet, Dieppe
Etching,
1954 |
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Burslem (seen through wire netting)
Sugar lift etching, 1970 |
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Oxford Garden
Etching, 1977 |
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Night Reflections
Aquatint, 1976 |
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Night
Windows
Aquatint, 1976-77 |
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Cruciform Variant I
Aquatint, 1977 |
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Cruciform
Variant II
Aquatint, 1977 |
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Daisies and Buddleia
Etching, 1981 |
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Cretan Church
Etching, 1983-85 |
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Deserted house near Silamos
Etching & Aquatint, 1983-85 |
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Knossos, Palm Trees, Villa Ariadne
Etching, 1983-85 |
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Chair, Amphora & Lemon Tree, Knossos
Etching & Aquatint, 1985 |
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Hinksey Willows, Oxford
Soft Ground Etching, 1983-85 |
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Hinksey
Willows
- Large Plate
Etching
& Drypoint, 1985 |
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Willows
Etching
& Drypoint, 1984-85 |
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Pine Trees, Villa Ariadne with Goats
and Horta Gatherers
Etching, c1988 |
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Aghios Andonias, Crete
Etching, 1990 |
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Knossos Courtyard
Etching, c1990 |
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Roughwood Farm
Etching, c1990 |
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Cretan Chair and Bowl of Fruit
Etching & Drypoint, c1991 |
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English Rose, Cretan Vase
– Variation in Soft-Ground
Soft-ground etching, 1994 |
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Knossos Table
Etching, c1994 |
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Honesty and three Jugs
Etching & Aquatint, 1995 |
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Rooftops, Dieppe
Etching, 1996 |
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Enamel Jug and Windfalls
Etching & Aquatint, 2001 |
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Garden Table with Watering Can
Etching & Aquatint, 2005 |
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Garden Table with Watering Can
– Blue and Brown
Etching, 2005 |
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The Blue Fork
Etching, 2005 |
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Studio Jugs and Boxes
Etching, 2006 |
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Studio Table
Drypoint, 2007 |
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Farm Buildings, Cuddesdon
Etching, 2008 |
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Objects on a sideboard
Intaglio collograph, 2009 |
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The Studio Cupboard
Drypoint, 2010 |
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Jug and Brushes
Drypoint, 2010 |
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Studio Shadows
Drypoint, 2010 |
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Terrace and Garden Fence
Relief Print, 2011 |
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Garden Chair
Drypoint, 2011 |
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Evening Shadows
Etching, 2012 |
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Leaves, Coffee Pot and Chair
Drypoint, 2014 |
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The Orange Chair
Colour Etching, 2014 |
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Variation
on Objects on a Greek Table
Etching, 2014 |
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Variation
on Objects on a Greek Table
- with colours
Etching, 2014 |
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Spotted
Jug
– Relief version in brown and black
Etching, 2015 |
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Brancaster
Staithe – Tide out
Drypoint, 2015 |
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Jug and Apples
Drypoint and carborundum, 2017. |
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Objects Against a Wall
Drypoint and carborundum, 2017. |
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Garden Chair
Drypoint and carborundum. |
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Onions and Shadows
Original etching, 2018. |
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Ageing Roses
Drypoint and carborundum, 2017. |
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Four Apples
Original drypoint, 2021. |
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Fruit and Squash
Original etching, 2021. |
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Pink Jug and Onions
Sugar aquatint & added oils, 2021 |
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