AN APPRECIATION FROM PROFESSOR ALAN RIACH UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW

Michael Clark’s paintings are a celebration of colour, light and form, and more than that: they are a reason for uplift, a tender engagement with the unobtrusive but totally substantial pleasures of the everyday things life brings to us.

The pleasure of looking at Michael Clark’s paintings might seem to have everything to do with surfaces and textures, yet they bring to us a rare quality of patient attentiveness.

Perhaps the places will be familiar: the Tuileries Gardens, the street markets of French towns, the evocation of flavours, scents and textures. Yet there is nothing merely sensationalist here. There is, rather, a kind of active commemoration of the moments of enjoyment, light falling on a tabletop; a wall or a rooftop; his paintings deliver something onto the canvas more than mere depiction.

MICHAEL G CLARK pai rsw rgi

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2023 John Davies Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh, ‘A Lust for Life’

2022 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, Santé

2022 Lemond Gallery, Glasgow, ‘Bliss’

2021 Lime Tree Gallery, Bristol, ‘Mellow’

2020 Lemond Gallery, Glasgow, ‘Les Pensees d’un artiste’

2020 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘Quedubon’

2019 Lime Tree Gallery, Bristol, ‘Of mists and mellow fruitfulness’

2019 Thompson’s Marylebone, London ‘With love’,

2018 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘Amour Amore’

2018 John Davies Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh, ‘Those Moments of Leisure’

2017 Thompson’s Marylebone, London, ‘A Sense of Place’

2016 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘A Tale of 2 Cities’

2015 Thompson’s Marylebone, London, ‘Beaucoup d’Amour’

2015 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘Café Society’

2015 Lemond Gallery, Glasgow, ‘Collection’

2014 Lime Tree Gallery, Long Melford, Suffolk, ‘A Painter’s Palette’

2014 Lemond Gallery, Glasgow, ‘Joie de Vivre’

2013 Roger Billcliffe Gallery, Glasgow

2013 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘Menage’

2012 Doubtfire Gallery, Edinburgh, ‘Quintessentially French’

2011 Bath Contemporary, ‘L’Alliance’

2011 Lime Tree Gallery, Bristol

2011 Thompson’s Marylebone, London, ‘Entente Cordiale’

2010 RGI Kelly Gallery, Glasgow, ‘A Very French Affair’

2009 Bianco Nero Gallery, Stokesley

2002 Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

1998 Sally Hunter Fine Art, London

1996 Sally Hunter Fine Art, London

Diplomas

2023 RGI Diploma from The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts

2014 RSW Diploma from The Royal Society of Painters of Watercolours

2012 PAI Diploma of Artist Membership from the Paisley Art Institute

Awards

2019 Eat and Drink Italy Purchase Award at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Exhibition

2017 Ruthven Gallery Award at the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Exhibition

2015 Artist Surfaces Award at the Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition

2011 The Jamieson Award at The Scottish Drawing Competition

2010 Winsor and Newton Award at The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour Exhibition

2008/7 The Wren Gallery Award for Still Life Painting at the Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition

2007 Art Hire Prize, Scottish Drawing Competition hosted by Paisley Art Institute

2007 Selected for Sunday Times/Singer Friedlander Watercolour Prize

2005 Art Hire Prize, at The Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition

2003 Runner up 2003 Aspect (Kennox) Painting Prize

Collections

Royal Bank of Scotland, The Maclaurin Trust Collection, First State Investments, Heckfield Place Hotel, London