Camilla Clark

Camilla (b 1961) grew up, and has spent most of her life, surrounded by the beautiful Somerset countryside - from the rolling Quantock hills to the calm expanses of the Somerset levels - and her environment has always informed her paintings.

After a BA Honours degree in Art History from Canterbury University, she gained an Interior Design Diploma from Kingston University. Both these disciplines have fed into her deep understanding of colour, shape and the academics of painting construction. She has been a professional painter full time now for over 20 years and works primarily in oil and acrylics.

Many years of successful Open Studio exhibitions led to representation by leading UK contemporary galleries as well as group exhibitions.

A move to the dramatic South Hams coast in 2021 means the clarity of the coastal light and a completely different landscape has (like many artists before her) stimulated a new exciting phase, where her paintings have become an expressive balance of bold and sensitive abstraction.

Artist Statement

I constantly see the world as a series of sketches and paintings logged in various filing cabinets in my head with the drawers a little open ready to be accessed at any time. The continuous analysis of colour, tones and form of my surroundings and thoughts act like the scales a pianist will do to warm up their fingers. Words don’t come easy to me but ‘writing’ with a paintbrush is my way of describing the world as I see it and the deep sense of contentment I have when painting is essential to my life.

My recent work explores the paring down of a scene to create a more abstracted, filtered expression of a place rather than a geographical record. Often a painting is not one place or moment but an amalgamation of snippets of places, moments and feelings from those filing cabinets. The endeavour is to create the perfect balance of composition, atmosphere and sense of place both in an academic sense with the placement of colour and line, and in a spiritual way with the personal, intangible ambience of each painting.

Camilla works from her studio in the South West and has work in private collections in the UK, USA, France and Germany.

In September 2024, she had a painting accepted for the prestigious annual exhibition of The Royal Society of Marine Artists at The Mall Galleries, London.