Blue Coffee Cafe



Still life and portrait work by Lynne Clarke featured during January and February 2009 in downtown Durham. Blue Coffee Cafe is a homey little cafe in downtown Durham where you can enjoy a slice of home made pound cake or red velvet cake with a specially brewed cup of coffee, or a fresh salad for lunch or an early morning breakfast while viewing some fun artwork. A great place to meet a friend or just to have a quiet cup of tea on your own. 202 Corcoran Street, Durham NC 27701 (7:30 am - 7:00 pm M-F, open til 3:00 pm Saturdays).

It Was a Good Year, was showing at Main Street Pharmacy, 213 West Main Street, Durham NC 27701.

Maypops, currently showing at Main Street Pharmacy, 213 West Main Street, Durham NC 27701.


Maypops is approximately 55x27", painted in acrylics on unfinished canvas. The background is a beautiful sky blue stained onto the canvas while the fluted glass bowl is formed with acrylic paint and Golden's extra heavy matte gel to force dimension and shift perspective. The green and white of the bowl mimics the glass I remember from my grandmothers' similar glass bowls. And Maypops, surely everyone knows what Maypops are - - those lovely seed balls from the passion flowers that bloomed in May. Some of the Maypops were green and firm, while others had turned all carmelly and golden and started shriveling. To the side is a chrystal vase with little Marguerites, remember those flowers? And a violet blue clematis. Everything is sitting on a wooden table, in tones of brown and red with a woody grain embedded in it.

Blue Yondering by Lynne Clarke. 36x48" acrylic on canvas.


Really fun contemporary paintings by Lynne Clarke, presented by Main Street Pharmacy, 213 West Main Street, Downtown Durham. This show includes both new still life work and large abstract color pieces, including Blue Yondering.

Cowgirl in Green flaunts that western motiff, contemporary art with a Texas twist!

Fun Still Life Paintings at Blue Coffee Cafe, 202 Corcoran Street, Durham NC 27701 through February 2009.


Flower With Fruit by Lynne Clarke, approx.15.75x21.75" acrylic on canvas.


Teapot With Cherry by Lynne Clarke, approx. 16.63x21.63" acrylic on canvas.

Great color with a flat effect in this series of paintings, emphasis on shapes and forms with little textural effect. Pleasing shapes and appealing compositions!

Self-Portrait


The Yellow Room, a self-portrait, is a small piece of contemporary art, 3.5 by 5 inches, framed in a great little construction by Eric at Frame WareHouse ( Oak Creek Shopping Center off Garrett Road & 15-501). The Yellow Room is done in acrylic and ink. Shown at Visual Art Exchange in the "People We Know" series.

Bean Traders' Coffee 9th Street July 2008


Featured Artist, Lynne Clarke, presents "Faces & Things" at Bean Traders' Coffee on 9th Street Durham 27701 during the month of July. The show includes small paintings in acrylic and prints of original paintings in paper & acrylic on paper. "Paper Doll Girl", showcased here, is an archival 11x14" print from an orginal work, framed with floating double mat and glass.

Pears & Triangles in Window



Favorite still life! An 8x10" acrylic on canvas, framed in gold leaf bumble bee frame. Fruit in glass bowl with background of trees on hillside & blue, blue skies outside the window.
Eden's Apple, 38x40" canvas painted in acrylic.

A surrealistic flight of fancy, Mother of the Man is 30x30" on canvas, incorporating a symbolic language to poignantly portray that most elemental of relationships. Acrylic paint and a lot of chutzpah.

Little Man, 16x20" acrylic on canvas, with all the earnest goodness of a young child sitting for that seminal portrait, yet reflecting all the gravity of the man he has now become in later life with a family and children of his own.

Blue Lady in a Pillbox Hat, 8x10" acrylic painting on canvas, reminiscent of times gone by with a fanciful twist on portraiture.

Young Courtney, 11x14" painting in acrylic on canvas, captures the essence of innocent babyhood burgeoning into childhood, trusting and shy...a trembling moment in time accentuated by swirling brush strokes.

Water color style of painting in acrylic on canvas led to this etherally beautiful still life image of fruit in a glass bowl against a blue background. Very lovely and poignant 11x14" acrylic painting on canvas.

Who do you see? Is it Mardi Gras? 38x40" acrylic on canvas with great energy and presence...not to mention great color!

The Blue Apple -- a still life with fruit topped off by a blue apple, surrounded by art graffiti from painting class, well known sayings by my teacher - - a really fun piece, measuring 8x10" unframed, acrylic on canvas.

Child of the Man



Child of the Man. This 38x42" acrylic on canvas painting in black and white portrays a man looking into a mirror, viewing an image of himself as a young child....


Doubles....
18x24" acrylic on canvas with some obvious stylistic influences, bright & bold in both color and form...




Happy Birthday Kippy!!!
Birthday Cake Head ...
created especially to celebrate a birthday!
16x20" acrylic on canvas....

Classic Lady

Auction Donation in Duke OB-GYN Fundraiser for Kenya February 16, 2008. Acrylic painting on canvas with found materials, 8x10" canvas, framed by Frame WareHouse in Oak Creek Shopping Center.

ARTIST STATEMENT



Extensive studies into styles of painting, particular pieces and artists and their backgrounds in social and historical context influence how my work takes shape. I immerse myself in this subject matter, invest my life and energy and affect a Newtonian result when the same energy I’ve ingested then recycles and pours from me onto canvas.

The typical characteristics of my work - - heavy texture, inclusion of divergent, interesting found materials, strong color, and the shape of mass and volume - - all converge and flow through a channel in my mind, subconsciously.

Often, visual cues provide the departure point; a picture, a painting, or some combination of pictures of paintings that offer perspectives I haven’t seen before. Then things take shape and form in my mind. I look at a canvas and consider its shape and size and reckon how best to represent my ideas in this white space.

The textural background is a major consideration because it’s the framework from which my images grow. Embedded textiles and strong, gestural paint strokes form a robust subtext that shapes and affects the development of the portrait. It’s not exactly magic or science, but something mysterious and wonderful slowly forms and builds in front of my eyes, under my brush strokes.

Man Eating Ice Cream Cone


My interpretation of a Picasso piece from his post-modern painting days - - this was a lot of fun to paint, and really started off a whole new way of looking at Picasso's works during his latter years. My recent appreciation for work from this period was initiated by reading a review where the author stated that despite the things said about him and his work from 1959 on, Picasso was just doing what he had always done - painting whatever he wanted with no regard for what others had to say. And in retrospect, it's easy now to see that he was painting in a post-modern style while everyone else was still doing modern.

Apples and Glass on Table


A rare still-life from this artist! But a lot of fun as I explored this style of painting and tried to come up with my own interpretation of pieces I was viewing as I studied portraits of food preparatory to submitting pieces to the VAE Food Show last July.

I love the juxtaposition of shapes and colors in this painting. Not to mention the sensation of texture and dimension. Usually my work is formed through application of many layers of paint. Underneath the paint, there are layers of modeling paste and heavy gel, both of which hold shape and form and create the heavy texture and dimension offset by the layers of paint color.

Untitled Study



This untitled study took hours and hours of time as I tried to create a veiled study in white, yet including neutral tones to highlight features of the image. The use of texture also creates dimension and tension in the image at the same time the many glazes of white and pale tones cool down the color palette.