Painter and sculptor, was born in Tasmania and educated at the Launceston Church Grammar School and the University of Tasmania. He began his working life as a farmer and grazier in Northern Tasmania. While at university studying for his LLB he attended the classes of George Davis, a well-known Tasmanian painter. Admitted to the Supreme Court of Tasmania as barrister and solicitor, he began to practise law in Tasmania in 1965. The following year he went abroad to further his studies in Fine Art and was accepted by the City and Guilds of London School of Art, Kennington. He studied there for a year, mainly in the sculpture studios under James Butler. After returning to Australia and to the law in late 1967, he worked mainly in the field of legal historical research and legislative drafting in NSW, while continuing to paint in oils and model in wax in his spare time. He has been a full-time artist since mid-1989.
In October 1991 Tom Clark was given a solo show of his bronze sculptures, paintings and drawings at Artarmon Galleries, Sydney. Lynette Fern in the SMH (25 October 1991) remarked on his '…vivid colours, cubistic-inspired distortions and play with the refactory nature of light through glass’. He has since shown works in Canberra and in New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW, at PC1 Exhibitionists Group Show (sculpture 1997), Robin Gibson Gallery (Sculpture 6 & 7, 1994 and 1995), North Shore Fine Art (sculpture), North Sydney & Mosman annual prize competitions, the Fleurieu Prize (1998) and Barker College Art Exhibition (sculpture 1999).
His paintings are not uncritical survivals paying homage to early 20th century cubism; nor are they 'witty’ postmodern pastiches. They seem to me to be unfashionably confident tributes to the personal relevance of sythetic cubism for this particular artist living in 21st century North Shore, Sydney. In his judge’s notes for the 1997 North Sydney Art Prize, Peter Laverty noted: ' Interior at Neutral Bay is a skiful, almost cubist interpretation, of a still life’. Even so, Clark’s images are never deliberate (or unwitting) anachronisms but unmistakeably of their time and place in light, colour and subject and perhaps in the way they embrace and accept, rather than dissect and refine, the ordinary objects and details of life. His solo exhibition of painting and sculpture at Artarmon Galleries, opened (by Joan Kerr) on 28 August 2001, continues his exploration of similar forms and subjects. Examples include the serene images illustrated in colour on the invitation to the exhibition: the elegant geometric purity of Homage to Crick & Watson – Double Helix (bronze, height 40.5 cm) and The Blue Pitcher , a synthetic cubist-style oil painting of a complex and crowded domestic interior in which everyday objects are at the same time comfortably prosaic and aesthetically transformed.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
