Brian Clarke
Brian Clarke was born in 1953 in Oldham, England. Even though he is widely considered the most important contemporary artist in stained glass practice, he has exercised with a wide range of different media: paint, sculpture, mosaic, drawing, collage, and tapestry among others.
Clarke has revolutionised stained glass not only technologically but also philosophically, pushing the boundaries of what this material can achieve. Since the early 1970s, he has collaborated with some of the world’s most prominent architects to create stained-glass designs and installations for hundreds of projects worldwide. The artist interrogates the extremes of transparency and opacity, light and dark, absence and presence, order and chaos.
His unique and radical approach has earned him numerous awards and honours. His artworks have been shown in prestigious collections and institutions worldwide such as The Victoria and Albert Museum, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Corning Museum of Glass New York and Tate London. His artistic collaborations have also included works with David Bailey, Hugh Hudson, Malcolm McLaren, and with Linda and Paul McCartney.
“ It is through painting that I understand how to view architecture, appreciate the rhythm of a poem, draw pleasure from the structure of a well-composed sentence. „