| Vernon Clarke... |
Its not just oil on canvass. It’s the canvas itself that plays a crucially important role in the creation of your work. Please outline the process of creating canvas from the materials that you use to the finished product. |
Correct - never just oil on canvas … that in actually is not the entire picture; there are a whole other set of skills involved in getting a canvas properly prepared before starting a painting. The ‘stretcher’ or ‘panel’ is such an important part of the painting! Savvy collectors can often be seen inspecting the back of a painting … to literally see what goes on behind the scene. Oftentimes, deals are sealed or collapse based upon the strength or lack of proper technical preparation.
A canvas stretcher should be made of a sturdy wood that doesn’t readily warp or attract insects such as termites. Corners should be firmly fixed (glued and nailed) to secure against collapse under the pressures of the canvas stretching. Good quality cotton duck or linen should always be used. I make, stretch, size and prime all my own canvases to ensure the highest quality product leaves my studio. I’m proud of these skills as much as the time that I invest in the actual painting. I practice and improve these skills constantly, so as not to lose them. |
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| Your grade three teacher, Ms. Taylor, was one of the first people that noticed your talent for drawing. Although, she did suggest that you should open up your English book and draw in art class. Now, you love to combine both art forms. Please elaborate on your poems and your painting. |
| Hah Haaaagh! Mrs. Taylor – how she scolded me on catching me drawing during her English lessons. Even so, she couldn’t help but encourage me to keep practicing as she inspected my drawings and saw redeeming promise for the future. Her words of encouragement still warms me at times of frustration and defeat. I keep faith with her encouragements by passing them on to my own students every week. I also love to write as it gives me a means of expression that is not always so immediate in my speech. Also I like to research ideas for my paintings. Collecting ideas and images through my camera. Solidifying my ideas in words … later returning to review my research and to re-examine them with fresh eyes before transcribing them into emotive paintings. She taught us well, encouraging us to understand the works of Shakespeare, Blake, Baudelaire as well as the story tellers like Robert Louise Stephenson and James Fennimore Cooper. Works that filled our heads with images and a yearning for adventure. Even now, her lessons still driving my imagination and helping me to compose my pictures. |
| Presently, you are working on your biography. Please tell us what it is like taking a look at your life & times. |
| What started out as a simple ‘Power Point’ presentation two years ago (Summer 2006) has turned into a marathon session of discovery of work that goes back some twenty-odd years and growing. I have had to edit not to trivialize the whole thing. I seem to have sold too many paintings without properly documenting them. Not Photographing, no documentation, nor securing much in way of provenance for them. Alternately, I have also re-discovered many old 35mm slides that I secured and considered lost during a move from Pembroke to Southampton. So, I’m in the process of correcting that oversight. It’s also provided me with a rich source of writing material in rediscovering the roots of some of my best ideas. Consequently, I’m revisiting old ideas for the future. There are so many drawings and sketching of ideas that I forget most of their original inspiration … only to have a “light” go on in my head in the middle of the night. A most interesting feeling … sleepily drifting between the twilight of dreamscapes and artistic composure … I promise there are no substances involved … just sweet old memories … leaving me with an ‘itch’ to wander down the paths that I took in life as a younger man. Good stuff for building a biography. It’s beginning to read like a real account of my life - having many aspects of the important junctures interwoven into my pictorial narratives. |
