Chanson de Merle n° 11 Print

Clare’s first painting, when she was ten years old, was of her grandfather sitting under an apple tree in their garden in Surrey. She had already decided to be an artist. By the time she was 16, she assembled a portfolio of paintings and drawings to study at Brighton Art College. After completing her Diploma in Art & Design at Brighton she was selected, with a full scholarship to the Royal College of Art, London, where, under the tutorship of Peter Blake, and Carel Weight she graduated with a Master of Fine Art degree. She then went on to be a university art lecturer while continuing to paint and exhibit internationally. Since then, through all of life’s vicissitudes, she has continued painting, drawing and making images every day, gaining years of experience, craftsmanship and technique to express an always active artistic intelligence and creativity. Her paintings express the joys of life, love and happiness and also the darker side of our existence. Currently, her work is on display at Art Image, Angoulême and Limoges, Le Palais de l’Ameublement, Périgueux, and Paul et frères Gallery One, Saintes, and at her studio. Clare has lived in France since 1997 and has dual French-British citizenship. She lives in the south Charente countryside with her journalist husband Brian McCulloch and their two cats. She designed and did much of the work for her studio/gallery, converted stables situated in a complex of old farm buildings. The constantly changing light, clouds and dramatic hills of the south Charente are a daily inspiration to make original, profound paintings in oils and acrylics. Hers is a highly personal vision marked by bravura execution in the medium of oil paint. It is an individualistic strongly identifiable style enriched by variety, experiment and research. Her preferred oil paint is Daler-Rowney Georgian in 225 ml tubes, diluted with pure turpentine. Her preferred brushes are wooden and short handled of various widths, with fine work being done with sable brushes only. Clare prefers to work with canvases flat on a table or on the floor. This enables her to work around the picture and see it from different angles. She finds a textured surface important and that the medium of oil paint is superlative for achieving this result. Applying the rich luminous layers of oil paint that are a predominant feature of her work can take months or years.