Browse our full directory of Worcestershire-based artists and makers. Participants in our August Art Week are marked with a yellow venue number beneath their name and description. Members without a venue number are part of our organisation but are not taking part in this year’s Art Week. You can search the WOS Art week map HERE and view / download the digital guide HERE.
Colin Clark Art & Illustration
Art Forms
Book arts & paper, Drawing, Illustration, Multidisciplinary, Painting, Sculpture
Artist information
Today I work as a professional artist and illustrator but I started out studying silversmithing and jewellery at college and working as a jeweller and goldsmith designing and making jewellery for 20 years while teaching adult education evening classes and City & Guilds. During that time, I also trained part time for five years as a therapist. My art career has taken a few twists and turns over the years. I’ve worked as an archaeological reconstruction artist, I’ve created illustrations for battle scenes and worked in a medieval miniature style to depict events from the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in France in the 13th Century. I’ve also created a range of cards and prints depicting often comical images of birds and animals found in gardens and fields around the Cotswolds.
Drawing and painting in watercolour was my first love and I could never shake the need to be creative through design or fine art. But in the early 2000’s I began painting in oils after making the move to work full time as an artist and the paintings sold successfully privately and at the London Affordable Art Fair through a dealer. The financial crash of 2007/8 put the art market in a bad place and it became impossible to sell enough work so, I took a series of jobs to allow me to keep a roof over my head.
After a ten year gap In 2018 I was desperate to get back to the work I loved so I undertook a part time Masters degree in Illustration at University of Gloucestershire and in 2021 this put me back on the road to being an artist with a new string to my bow and a new determination to work as an artist full time. I rented a studio in Cheltenham and with the pandemic behind me, I began to paint outdoors in the beautiful Cotswolds landscape. My paintings began to sell well and a gallery took my work to the popular Fresh Art Fair in Cheltenham. My oil painting style was described by The Artmanac magazine as ‘pioneering’ as I used highly saturated colour and a rich impasto texture over the whole canvas.
My current work ranges from illustrations, watercolours, oil paintings and artist’s books as well as ceramic and metal sculptures. I have always been driven to do creative work and I cannot imagine my life without being able to push forwards with new ideas, concepts and novel approaches to my art work.
Website and social media
https://www.instagram.com/colinclarkart
https://www.facebook.com/colinclarkart/
http://www.colinclark.co.uk
Art Week Venue
Colin Clark
