Sue Clarke
Background
Since graduating from Central St. Martins, my career has combined freelance illustration, textile design and teaching.
Commissions: span across editorial, publishing, design and advertising, and include several self-authored fiction and non-fiction children's picture books and award-winning pop-up books, published globally.
Selected Clients: The Royal Festival Hall, Time magazine, Wall St. Journal, The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Radio Times, New Scientist, Penguin Books, Walker Books, Macmillan, Transworld, Routledge, Hyperion, BBC Educational Books, NatWest, Amnesty International, the NHS, Kings College/London, and Decca Records.
Awards: include the 'Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies' (USA) for children's book 'Tombs of the Pharaohs', published by Hyperion (USA), Tango Books (UK), Lemnisaat (Holland), Mondadori (Italy), and Susaeta (Spain).
Exhibitions: include the Mall Galleries and Conningsby Gallery, London, The London Transport Museum and The Poly in Falmouth.
Teaching: I am currently a part-time senior lecturer on the BA Illustration course at Falmouth University, having taught on various MA’s, BA’s and Art Foundation in the UK. Previous roles include joint Course Leader, Head of ear and External Examiner.
Academic Writing: embraces contributions to academic books on illustration, notably a chapter for 'A Companion to Illustration', published by Wiley Blackwell US, titled, 'The Illustrator as Visual Problem Solver: A Deconstruction of Conceptual Strategies for the Contemporary Illustrator'.
New Work
Having worked extensively as an illustrator, I have shifted my focus from commission-led digital work, designed to be seen in print, to personal work created as one off physical collage paintings, designed to be viewed in situ.
My new work uses geometric forms in nature and colour theory as a framework to create sensory portraits of plants from within.
Inspired by molecular plant structures and human cellular patterns, geometric plant forms are composed of methodical, repetitive spots, exploring kinetic, sensory colour combinations. The resulting effect aims to provide an ambiguous, hypnotic, meditative space, between the physical and the ethereal, for therapeutic contemplation.
Plants are examined for their curious behaviour, from different perspectives, inside and outside, from the visibly tangible to the abstract science of their make-up, through dissections, cross-sections and microscopic viewpoints. Our connection to them is explored through their medicinal, healing properties and therapeutic nature. This dissection of plants provides the basis for a personal, imaginative depiction of their sensory worlds.
Key sources of inspiration include bizarre botany, plant and human anatomy, botanical charts and medical diagrams; phyllotaxis, the botanical study of the arrangement of leaves, petals and seeds; geometry in nature (fractals and symmetry); the harmonious geometry of sacred art and the employment of geometric proportions, shapes and symbols to evoke spiritual contemplation (Mandalas etc); the therapeutic, mindful Indian tradition of kantha stich, and the optical effects of Op Art.
Artworks are collages composed of gauche painted textures. Some are printed on linen and stitched in Kantha, introducing an additional hypnotic layer as the stitch interacts with the spots.