ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE
JOHN CLARK, ARTIST
narrative paintings. “I make the ingredients and plonk them in whatever space they can occupy.”
Slowing the planet’s spin is one of the blessings of the creative process, and it is what has anchored sculptor and painter John Clark within the art world – throughout spells teaching, working in galleries and an interlude as art director in the games industry. John has exhibited as far as Miami and Beijing and was a contestant on BBC Two’s Show Me the Monet . “I gradually got more disillusioned with the way things were going in the art world,” he recalls. “As artists in Glasgow when I was young, we were all about taking control of our own destiny. That was great, except all that effort on marketing or networking was getting in the way of people making interesting work.” He broke free of the radical art circles and moved to Cambridge, where the video games industry was thriving. “I was interested in this coming together of art and science,” John explains. “I saw the games industry as a great new world.” That interest in digital art never evaporated. In 2016, John created his first ‘flat sculpture’, designed on his computer, then printed and folded on paper. He envisages them as extensions of his
Working on PlayStation One on tight polygonal budgets fed into John’s artistic stance, resisting the painstaking portrayals of some contemporary work. “Whenever I see detailed photographic depictions, I feel the enormous burden of work,” John says. “It makes me want to collapse in empathy.” John’s bread and butter is relationships. “Narrative painting is difficult to do well, because society no longer accommodates the narratives that everybody wants,” he says. “The computer is like a doll’s house – you’re moving puppets around, doing the same thing again and again. It’s a bit like being a writer, starting off with a character and not knowing what you’re going to do.” For John, the purpose of art has altered over time. “When I was younger, I would have been appalled at the idea that art was therapy,” he asserts. “I regret dismissing that aspect of creative work or play. You’ve got to take it seriously, without being burdened by it.”
THINKING MAN John works from his studio in a former dental surgery – as themes of society and logic combine
The computer is like a doll’s house – you’re moving puppets around
CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK AUGUST 2022 39
Powered by FlippingBook