Mark Clarke: Finding the color of air

MARK CLARKE is a magician of the air. He loves its color, its shape, its depth and emotion. He casts spells woven from pure atmosphere. He craves the dark moodiness of an Oregon winter sky as much as he enjoys the predictable loveliness of summer. Clarke, 64, is a landscape artist in Eugene. For nearly half a century - he started painting as a teen-ager growing up in Junction City - he has painted scenes that are familiar to anyone who lives in the Willamette Valley, adding to them a heightened brooding quality that distinguishes his work.

It is, in a word, the air. The atmosphere of a Mark Clarke painting is hard to miss once you've seen one. His landscapes are big and somber, full of angst, as perfectly dismal as a Bergman film. The colors are dim and muted - earth tones have crept up into the sky. A tree is no longer simply a tree but an indefinable shape transfigured by the thick Oregon air. Clouds have a darkness that just barely escapes menace. The few buildings look lonely, overwhelmed by nature. "Oregon has a certain weight about everything," Clarke says. "The greenery. The heaviness of the large trees. Everywhere you look is possibility."

Clarke studied art at Oregon State College and the University of Oregon, spent time in the Army, returned to the UO for a master's program and was unexpectedly offered a job, just before graduation, at the UO Museum of Art. The museum needed someone who could frame and hang paintings. Clarke had picked up woodworking skills at home and at high school. For that, he acquired the title Chief Museum Exhibit Preparator. Given his complete lack of museum experience, Clarke first thought the job must be temporary. It wasn't. He stayed 11 years, quit, went out on his own as an artist, suffered through a recession, saw his one gallery go out of business and got hired again at the museum as a technician and stayed another 11 years.

These days, Clarke is retired from the museum and painting full time, ensconced in a basement studio at his home near Hendricks Park. He works on as many as 30 paintings at a time, most of which are begun as sketches in the field. Clark uses acrylics for his paintings, which on casual inspection look like they've been done with oils. Acrylics, he notes, generally have a hard-edged, bright and plasticky look to them - more of a Miami or Los Angeles ambience than Eugene or Brownsville. Clarke mutes his colors and gives his paintings their depth by using layers of transparent glazes. Though his palette is generally earth-toned, you find surprising glimmers showing up in Clarke's depictions of air and cloud. "The last couple years I've been painting the color in the sky into colors you wouldn't see out there in nature," he says.

Throughout his career, he's never wandered far from a single source of inspiration: the Willamette Valley and its rich, evocative atmosphere. "Ninety percent of my work comes from around the valley. It feels comfortable to me because I've lived here," Clarke says. "And it's constantly changing. When you're down near a river the light changes. At first, it's quiet. Then the birds get used to you. Ducks fly in. Frogs start croaking. I've had deer run in front of me. Things come alive." These days, Clarke sells his work through half a dozen galleries around the state and has trouble painting fast enough to keep up with sales.

"I've done one thing in my life right -- and that's continue to paint," he says. "If I had enough money, I wouldn't care at all about a painting ever going out of here. I'd just keep them all and keep looking at them."

Nov. 26, 2000