Brian Clarke : Lead Based Drawings

 Outpost 030522

Stained Glass

Painting

Appropriation

Collage

Using Lead As The Ground Of The Work

Don't Forget The Lamb, Brian Clarke. 2008

New Work : Lead Based Drawings

A lot of people are interested in skulls, but not nearly as much today as in the past. The skull is not only a memory of who we were but also an image of what we will be, I think it will probably engage artists as a subject for as long as art exists.

For me, as I've grow older, imagined truth is just as valid as factual accuracy.

But what really makes me feel isolated is that I don't know any artists today who truly understand what makes good architecture.

There are certain things you can say with stained glass that you cannot say with painting.

The black lead outline emphasize the colour. The minute you put a black line next to a colour the colour is intensified by a factor of three to four times.

You see stained glass by virtue of the passage of light through it, whereas you see a painting by the light reflected off it. So, in contrast to the static condition of a painting, a stained glass window is in a constant state of change as the day progresses, the clouds move, traffic or people pass by behind it.

The problem with works of stained glass is that they have too often been left in the hands of craftsmen who don't think like artists about how to enlarge the possibilities of the medium.

Up until the 60s and 70s lead was solely a structural element that held the pieces of glass together. It's formed as an H-section and because glass was so valuable a commodity, if a piece broke in putting the window together, that piece was then held together by tiny spider leads. This practical device intrigued me, I realized that lead had a potential outside its structural function. I've always drawn and realized that I could use the medium of lead without the line being hitched to its historical role.

There have been only two artists to whom I've felt really close. One was John Piper because he knew how to work with a building and the other is Johannes Schreiter, the German artist.

Study for Portrait of John Piper  2007  Oil on Canvas

Study for Portrait of Kenneth Clark  2008  Oil on Canvas

The Office for the Dead  2008  Lead and Stained Glass on Lead

Shopping List  2008  Lead and Gold on Lead

Don't Forget the Lamb  2008  Lead, Stained Glass and 'Oil on Canvas' on Lead

Lamina : Brian Clarke. 2005

I suppose I wanted to engage the same kind of disciplines that an architect has to deal with when he's building, because I feel what I do is so integrally married to architecture. In a way what I'm doing is coming as close as I can to creating my own architectural experience without the interference of an architect.