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Brian Clarke Quotes

1953–2025 England

Brian Clarke (2 July 1953 – 1 July 2025) was a British painter, architectural artist and printmaker, known for his large-scale stained glass and mosaic projects, polemical writings and lectures, and collaborations with major figures in contemporary architecture.

England
Painters

Random Brian Clarke quote

10 quotes

The desolate truth carried in profundity is made even more striking when matched by the sublime energy of the decorative.

Painting is a way for me to view the world as it exists and the world as it might be.

As punk rock was able to sweep the board clean in music, so must the board be cleared in visual art.

Punk articulated the vitriolic disapproval by the young of the sneaking complacency in music, art, politics and perhaps most important of all - the environment.

Art is reimbued with its genuine power and profundity in the architectural realm. Its real power lies in the cathedral, the shopping center, the hospital. Not in the studios of Soho and Chelsea or the galleries of Madison Avenue or Bond Street.

Colour is the animator of my poetical ideal. It is the single most important device in my work, and the driving force behind its impact.

It's not that painting is the medium with which I identify the most. Painting is the medium through which I am able to identify with anything external.

My art is an art for the working class.

The Spitfire and the Porsche and the battleship have something of perfection in their design. They are anonymous in their beauty, like the fleur-de-lys, and compelling, like heraldic ciphers of the 20th century.

Fallen petals on the grass or scattered flowers across a field do unexpected things when you examine them – Primroses seem to cluster together in a shape that recalls a single flower; Bluebells become entirely anonymous in a hovering mist; Daffodils group together into crowns of thorns and barbed wire.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Brian Clarke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.