Sue Clark

View-Scapes

From Sue Clark:

I create visual expressions of my personal relationship with trees.

Portrayed from a close-up face to face perspective, much in the same way we meet people, I explore the unique surface characteristics - the growths, cracks, mosses etc that mark and explain the trees life-story and to gain insight into its character and individuality.

Hints of setting and atmosphere are found twining along the trees flanks – like a drapery of sorts that both supports and frames the tree on centre stage.

My art is founded in the practices I learned as a Fine Arts student at Ontario College of Art (AOCA Fine Arts), combined with a self taught technique of creating “paintings” from fabric and thread. My creativity is ignited when exploring the deep range of possibilities of fabric and thread to create vibrant “living textured” artworks.

Fabric is richly embedded with countless unique properties, from simple aspects such as colour, tone, texture - to more complex and personal emotional responses to fabric types - elements I use to add a depth of feeling to the artwork.

From my first stitched artwork created 6 years ago based on a palette of roughly 12 fabrics, to my current work where I draw from hundreds of fabrics, the process of creation remains the same -Intricately shaped, hand-cut pieces of fabric are arranged and pinned onto a stretched canvas then blended together by countless hand pulled stitches.

Creating the foundation of an artwork - the selection, cutting, shaping, layering of the fabrics is the most challenging aspect of my process. While always working toward a certain look and feel, I am always surprised as the image begins to grow under the intimate workings of my needle and thread.

Because my art is completely hand crafted without the use of machine or digital interface the fabric pieces I cut and the stitches I pull have a signature as distinctive as a painters brushstroke.

The forest some of these trees lived in has now been clear cut, the land they grew from plowed and re-shaped ready for development. Others are from protected forests such as the Redwood Forests of northern California (96% of old growth logged) and Carmanah Provincial Park (on Vancouver Island only 21% of old growth forest left).

With the on going depletion of the natural environment it is my imperative as an artist to call attention to the importance of trees as vital living organisms that are integral to the overall health and well being of the earth.

Trees are silent giants that we live alongside.

There is a selection of smaller works by Sue Clark available to purchase from the TOSH Gallery Shop:

For Sales Inquiries please call 250-752-6133 or email info@theoldschoolhouse.org