Talk:Graham Clarke
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Graham Clarke, author, illustrator and humorist, is one of Britain's most popular and best-selling printmakers. He has created some five hundred images of English rural life and history and of the Englishman's view of Europe. Born in 1941, Clarke's upbringing in the austerity of war-time and post-war Britain, made him reliant on his own imaginative resources. Responding to the comedy of everyday life, he brings his own unique brand of humour to his interpretation of past and present history through the eyes of the common man.
He has attracted universal admiration for his revival of beautiful, hand-coloured prints in the tradition of Thomas Rowlandson. The famous 'arched top' etchings, with which Graham Clarke established a widely successful reputation in Britain and overseas, came to public attention in 1973 when the first of these, Dance by the Light of the Moon, was exhibited in London at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Show, and sold out.
Examples of his work are held by Royal and public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and the National Library of Scotland in the United Kingdom, as well as by Trinity College, Dublin, the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the New York Public Library and the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Many more are to be found on the walls of private homes all over the world, collected systematically by devotees, as well as singly by ordinary art lovers who "know what they like". For over thirty five years Clarke has sustained a remarkable evolutionary development of his work, while remaining true to a philosophy of life and to a democratic ideal which he was already formulating as a schoolboy.
His books, Graham Clarke's "History of England", Graham Clarke's "Grand Tour" and "Joe Carpenter Son, An English Nativity", were published by Phaidon Press. The latter, a verse play, now having been performed more than 300 times in churches and schools worldwide. His 'discovery' of "W. Shakespeare Gent. His Actuale Nottebooke" saw the publication of a quite different work in 1992. This has been followed by "Engelskmann I Lofoten" a Norwegian Sketchbook in 1996. Spring 2000 saw the publication of 'Bait Box Stew', sketches and notes from his beloved Cornwall, and 'KENT', a collection of watercolours on his home territory.
In 1999 he was asked to become an official ambassador for the County of Kent, a role which he pursues with much enthusiasm. For the last twelve years his work has taken him regularly to Japan where he has now become that country's most popular British artist. Kodansha, Japan's largest book publisher, issued "The World of Graham Clarke", an introduction and explanation of eighty Clarke etchings in Japanese, a second edition has now been printed.
Graham Clarke is a man with an overriding sense of tradition, and of religious, social and historical continuities. He takes pride in his view of himself as a local man, a "Man of Kent", with a firm faith in the peace and stability of family, home and community. As such, life and art have always been interdependent, mutually sustaining activities. His wife Wendy, his four children, his animals and friends, the cottage industry he maintains in the village of Boughton Monchelsea where he lives, his comedy band, and the surrounding landscape, offer a microcosm of the world and its history. The scenes he depicts represent both for him and for his everwidening audience, an idyll and a universal ideal.
[edit] Potential copyright violation
I have removed the material in this article about Graham Clarke, the printmaker because major portions are identical with [1]. If someone wishes to create an article about this person, they should give the article a different name (such as Graham Clarke (printmaker)) and use original text. –Shoaler (talk) 14:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
