Michael Clark - mclarkpainter

In the summer of 1993 I decided to finish my university studies. I was twenty six years old. I enrolled as a business major at the University of Utah with three years to finish my degree. I took one elective art class and that was it, I found where I belonged. I remember returning home from class one night and announcing that I was going to change my major and become an artist. Sometimes I still wonder what my wife was thinking when she said “um…..OK”?
I graduated in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts in painting and drawing. During my studies I concentrated on the mechanics of realism. Creating the illusion of three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface. I studied under the instruction of David Dornan, Tony Smith, and Paul Davis. My main artistic interest and subject matter at that time were park structures. The colors, shape, and design of the structure was what attracted me in the first place, but it was the linear, man made industrial structure surrounded by nature that inspired me to begin painting them.

I entered the graduate painting program at Arizona State University in 1999. During the time between educational programs, I experimented with a variety of styles and techniques of painting. However in graduate school I started cropping the composition and forming a design quality to my park structure images. The addition of roller coaster subject matter allowed for a more dynamic visual composition to my paintings. Not long after I began using amusement park images, I had trouble finding accessible rollercoaster and amusement park structures close to home. To overcome this problem I built my own park structure/rollercoaster. My construction of a small papier mache industrial design shaped still life (24”x24”x24”), provided an abundance of subject matter. It was this body of work that made up my MFA thesis and several shows beyond.

Upon graduating I found myself wondering if the work was truly mine or a collaborative work guided by the voices of instructors and colleagues. I spent time soul searching and experimenting with other ways of painting. I love painting and drawing the figure. During this time in my career, I worked with some figurative narration that had mild political and fairytale undertones. I am very proud of these figurative works. However in the early spring of 2006, during a slide lecture presenting my work, I noticed an evolution in my abstract work that confirmed to me that those paintings were indeed my work, and my voice. Realizing this evolution inspired me to resume painting abstract works with a renewed confidence.
I have heard it said that life is a journey and not a destination. And so it is with my work. One step and then another and then another. With my figure work I began with an idea and then produced the painting. With my abstract paintings I make the work inspired by visual decisions and as time passes the work slowly reveals its deeper meaning.

The progression of a painter has been explained to me like this, “As painters we work on paintings and then we make jumps or breakthroughs in our work. We work some more and achieve more jumps and accomplish more breakthroughs.”
The further my career progresses, the more I discover the truth of this. Life truly is a journey that we travel and not a destination we should rush to.