PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY
CAROLINE MCADAM CLARK REVERIES: INSPIRED BY TRAVEL & PLACE
10 June – 10 July 2021
Eruption watercolour 45 x 51 cm
CAROLINE MCADAM CLARK
REVERIES: INSPIRED BY TRAVEL & PLACE The recent period of lockdown has provided me with a space in which to reflect. The result is partly a collection of work drawn from 'before' the pandemic...conceived as a travel inspired series...Mali, India, the Navaho country, Namibia, and the volcanoes and Inca culture of Ecuador and Peru. However events since March 2020 have contrived to divert my attention towards embracing the freedom to throw off a constraining 'theme' and follow my nose. So although 'after' the pandemic has not yet arrived, I have used this extraordinary time to exploit my imagination and nudge my brain into connecting memory with events, drawing with poetry and painting with music.....in short playing with all those aspects of life that have always driven me hither and thither as my interests have evolved and my curiosity been piqued. 'Place' in this context is more about the place in which many of these works have actually been created - in my studio, that space where anything can be attempted and dreamt up from anywhere. As a young child and into my late teens I lived abroad following my parents' trajectory. A sort of 'Nowhere' (and everywhere) sequence of places---though ultimately more enriching than I can adequately describe. Since then however my 'Somewhere' has turned out to be the place where I have found the ability to focus, to come to rest like a sea bird or swallow after crossing the oceans in search of its winter or summer refuge, and that place is on the Suffolk coast. So a group of works more diverse than the exhibition as originally conceived, but open to all the digressions and byways offered by life itself that with luck, might spark satisfying imaginative riffs. Caroline McAdam Clark May 2021 Front cover: Gently Floating watercolour 39 x 56 cm
Navaho Dreaming I & II both oil on canvas 41 x 82 cm
Dogon Pathway, Mali
Red Earth, Indian Shrine
oil & charcoal 14 x 25 cm
oil & pencil on paper 18 x 20 cm
Fishing Boats, in memoriam
Fishing Boats, in memoriam
125 x 71cm
79 x 66 cm
Pencil and wash on vintage charts of the East Anglian Coast These works are about my own early memories of watching the fishing boats setting off for the day from the beach at Aldeburgh, often in a line of ten or fifteen.
Some twelve remain today decaying on the shingle, and these three drawings are in memory not only of those twelve (still identifiable by their numbers or names) but of all those long since gone. They swing on their anchors in the sky, ghosts of themselves. Fishing Boats, in memoriam 113 x 71cm
Winter Solstice oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
Standing Stones Solstice oil on canvas 35 x 35 cm
Ionia on Fire oil on canvas 45 x 78 cm
Viking, in memoriam oil on canvas 25 x 50 cm
IH 118, in memoriam oil on panel 25 x 50 cm
Starchart I
Starchart II
collage & gouache on astronomic chart 30 x 33 cm
collage & gouache on astronomic chart 30 x 33 cm
Out of the Bear oil on paper on canvas 61 x 61 cm
Cotopaxi, Ecuador
Volcano I
watercolour 37 x 50 cm
oil monotype 46 x 58 cm
Heading for the Light oil on panel 60 x 60 cm
Ex Voto Fishing Boat
Ex Voto Fishing Boat
oil on wood diameter 43 cm
oil on canvas 30 x 30 cm
Prairie
Memory Room
gouache & pencil 21 x 29 cm
monoprint & gouache 17 x 22 cm
Separation
Wall of Memories
watercolour 20 x 30 cm
gouache 33 x 37 cm
Lockdown I
Lockdown II
collage & watercolour 29.5 x 20 cm
collage & watercolour 29.5 x 20 cm
Pandemic 2020 pencil & charcoal 46 x 35 cm
Reach for the Sun oil on canvas 46 x 102 cm