Welcome to the official website of South African artist JFC Clarke (John Frederick Casper Clarke 1946 - 2021)

I have attempted to convey a particular vision distilled from the experience of traveling, collecting and recording over many years.  I have been cognizant of geological forms, an arid vastness of landscape, mining activity, battlefields, domestic structures, and the artifacts and detritus of past and present inhabitants. 

 Elements of landscape and still life merge or are juxtaposed and I intend that a quality of stillness permeate my work that does not exclude a pictorial play involving light, form, shadow and tensions relating to placement and the ‘space between’.

 I work exclusively on paper, using pencil, metal point, pastel or a printing process. In recent years I have preferred working on a smaller scale. I enjoy the dry, powdery quality of pastel, fragile yet versatile. As a printmaker I have had a longstanding interest in the history of printing and the characteristics and visual possibilities associated with different traditional printing processes. More recently I have focused on digital stylus drawing and inkjet printmaking.   

- JFC Clarke