Venerable Eugene artist Mark Clarke was best known for his unique and quietly powerful landscapes of the Willamette Valley. The Central Oregon Coast, Fern Ridge, and the rural farmland of Oregon were some of his favorite subjects. Some of his paintings were started on location, then worked on for long periods in his studio. Others were entirely from his imagination, nourished by his long experience of living in, observing, and painting the region. Clarke's vision of the landscape resulted in soft, luminous, almost dream-like works.
His experimental figurative works, generated primarily from his imagination, took him in a very different direction from his landscapes. He used this body of work to experiment with a variety of techniques and tools for handling paint: a greater use of texture, more impasto, wide brushes, painting knives, and glazes, all of which added further power and boldness to these pieces.
Clarke built and painted his own frames, complementing his work with an additional element that expressed his aesthetic and artistic commitment.
In describing his work, Clarke said: "It's hard to talk about paintings like these because there is no formula. They come out of the process -- the working on them. Things change from day to day. I work on them over and over and over again...even these little ones. It's like landscaping -- moving the shrubbery around!"