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Timothy J. Clark: A Retrospective

January 20 - April 13, 2008       

This mid-career retrospective featuring artist Timothy J. Clark displays a unique style that combines California regionalism with a New York sensibility of Abstract Expressionism, merging two radically different American painting traditions. Born and raised in Santa Ana, California, and educated at Art Center, Chouinard ('72), CalArts ('74), and Otis, Clark is a contemporary painter working primarily in watercolor. (right: Timothy J. Clark, Reunion, ©Timothy J. Clark)

Guest curated by Mr. Jean Stern, Director of the Irvine Museum, the exhibition includes 35 drawings, watercolors and oil paintings created over a 40-year period by the award-winning artist.  According to Stern, "Timothy J. Clark sees things ordinary people can't ... One of the finest artists of this time, Clark is among my favorite painters. With a fidelity to his own artistic vision, he paints in the rich traditions of Sargent and the American Impressionists. His masterful drawing, heightened sense of color and light, and comprehensive composition testify to decades of dedication as an artist. His sensibilities range from quiet and poetic to vigorous and emotional."

The exhibition will run concurrently with "A Seed of Modernism: The Arts Students League of Los Angeles.  Fittingly," Timothy J. Clark serves as the only California painter who teaches at the Arts Student League of New York. In October 2005, the New York Times listed Mr. Clark as a "luminary of the Art Students League" in an extensive article about the League.

Renowned for his lush gardens and landscapes, sensitive portraits and evocative interior studies, Clark is perhaps best known in Orange County for his exquisite paintings of Sherman Gardens in Corona Del Mar and those of the Mission San Juan Capistrano, where he has been painting for over three decades. He has had several exhibitions at both venues in addition to a solo exhibition at Bowers Museum in Santa Ana in 2000.

Work by Clark is represented in many private and public collections including the Smithsonian/National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Farnsworth Art Museum in Maine, and the Museum of the City of New York which acquired his on-site drawings of a still-smoldering Ground Zero. Timothy J. Clark also has had a long and noted career as an arts educator both in California and New York City. Clark is also an occasional guest lecturer at the National Academy School in New York, the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts, and the Yale Summer Classical Education Program in Rome, Italy.

Farrington writes that "Clark's ostensibly forthright watercolors...not only are glittering in their execution -- bathed in sunlight, swathed in shadow, shimmering with sure-handed yet expansive and textured brushwork -- but also embody the postmodern concept of art-as-idea. Clark has an almost uncanny ability to infuse rudimentary and inert objects...with something akin to a human soul." (left: Timothy J. Clark, The Mirror, ©Timothy J. Clark)

Exhibition catalogue

A full-color treatise of Clark's work entitled "Timothy J. Clark," has been published by Petaluma-based Pomegranate Communications and will serve as an enhanced catalogue for the Clark exhibition. It includes a Foreword by noted American artist Will Barnet, a biographical essay by Jean Stern, and a critical essay by award-winning New York-based art historian, Professor Lisa Farrington, PhD.

Exhibition tour

The exhibition will travel across the country to the Butler Museum of American Art in Ohio from June 7 to August 3, 2008; then to the Whistler House Museum of Art in Lowell, Massachusetts, from August 27 to October 15, 2008. The Clark exhibition will conclude in January 2009, with a gala solo exhibition at Hammer Galleries in New York City.

(above: Timothy J. Clark, Winter Solstice, ©Timothy J. Clark)

(above: Timothy J. Clark, Serra Chapel, ©Timothy J. Clark)

(above: Timothy J. Clark, The Maine Woodworking Shop of Raymond C. Small, ©Timothy J. Clark)

Editor's note: RL readers may also enjoy:

• West Coast Art: 19th-21st Century
• Timothy J. Clark's website

In 1996 the editor of Resource Library established an art exhibition program at Mission San Jaun Capistrano. Timothy J. Clark was one of the earliest exhibitors.

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