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Graham Clucas

Penzance
I lectured in Fine Art from 1966 to 2007. My research included a PhD - 'Painting Silence'. I am now retired and working on the themes of Silence, Time and Being.
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Artist’s Statement: Graham Clucas

I am now in my eighty-first year and still wondering what I am and what I am doing here. It’s the age-old question. ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. Although I wouldn’t expect to find an answer, and would prefer not to, my life has been enriched by the ideas of those (from Spinoza to Zen monks) who have thought deeply about this question, and about how we should spend our time here.

I am particularly drawn to the things we cannot know and the questions that can’t be answered. Silence, where there are no questions or answers, has been a good starting point. My current painting continues to draw on my years of teaching and doctoral research on ‘Painting Silence’, which explores how the practices of silent painting that developed from Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism grapple visually with the fundamental questions of existence.

Time is another enriching mystery which plays an important role in my work and in my practice as a painter. Like St Augustine, ‘Provided that no one asks me what it is, I know. If I want to explain it to an inquirer, I do not know.’ Painting is an apposite medium in which to explore these questions which language struggles to answer. The experience of time, as mindfully observed in the act of painting and of viewing a painting, is another aspect of existence which I hope my work might bring into clearer focus for those who look at it.

The act of painting is not just about creating an external object, but also, in the words of Herbert Read, of vitally reorganising the balance of impulses within oneself. It is a transformative act, which can lead people to a fuller understanding of themselves and their surroundings. With increasing age, the act of painting as a reorganisation of impulses, ideas and responses to unanswerable questions, becomes more and more important to me. I aim to create work which engages the viewer in the transformative experience of confronting the silent, unanswerable questions that surround us with wonder, if we only turn our attention to them.

 

 

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