CLIVE KIRK

At the age of eight I discovered a book on past masters of art which awakened the artist in me, I began drawing and painting and have been creative since. My parents wanted me to get a formal school education and were reluctant to send me to art school, however during my primary school years I had a painting teacher that was somewhat of a mentor. He convinced them that I should complete my high school years at the Johannesburg school of Art, Ballet & Music. After completing high school I went on to work for several advertising agencies and design studios. During the time I worked in advertising I was moonlighting occasionally. Freelance commissions were being offered to me frequently, so I finally decided to freelance full-time, and began working from my home studio and worked as a commercial artist for 26 years. This year I've begun painting full time as a fine artist. I’m painting to build up a body of work to exhibit in the near future. I enjoy the outdoors / travel with my family, am a keen fly fisherman, and also cook up a storm periodically.

The objective of my work is to kindle an emotional response. The style and technique of painting I tend to use are diverse in medium and technique - each painting having it’s own demands, yet I aim for provocative realism. Without question I have had influences, as has every artist. In particular, Ingres, Vermeer, Velazquez, Picasso. The modern contemporaries being Ray Harris~Ching, Alyssa Monks, John Meyer, Yigal Ozeri to name a few. My journey as an artist is through depicting subjects that evoke and visually stimulate attention. As a realist painter, I endeavour to explored the obscure undercurrents of the subject, the patterns and shapes, light and contrast that juxtapose to create the form which ultimately ‘draws’ the viewer into the story of my painting..and thereby create the narrative. My fascination with painting is to capture these abstract forms, the dichotomy of the seen and unseen that when completed and taken as a whole complete the visual, to unveil the complexity of the subject wether it is a human form or otherwise, to capture the essence of the subject and create a tangible communication through my painting. The aim is for the viewer to have an affinity with a work, an analogous emotional and a personal reaction drawn from similar experiences of a moment in time or memory - the things that shape us.. and hopefully for the beholder to have get as much pleasure from viewing the work as it got me to create it..