Graham Clarke (b1941)

Graham Clarke is one of Britain’s most popular and best-selling printmakers. He has created some five hundred images of English rural life and history and of the Englishman’s view of Europe. Born in 1941, Clarke’s upbringing in the austerity of war-time and post-war Britain, made him reliant on his own imaginative resources. Responding to the comedy of everyday life, he brings his own unique brand of humour to his interpretation of past and present history through the eyes of the common man.

He was educated at Beckenham Art School, before going on to the Royal College of Art where he specialised in illustration and printmaking. With encouragement from Edward Bawden, Clarke began refining an individual aesthetic, printing traditional landscapes marked by a sense of locality and genre. Graduating in 1964, he benefited from the print boom of the decade and, with commissions from Editions Alecto and London Transport Publicity Department a promising career was launched.

He became known for his arched top etchings, the first of which was exhibited in 1973 at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition, a print called Dance by the Light of the Moon which sold out.

Examples of his work are held by Royal and public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Tate Gallery and the National Library of Scotland in the United Kingdom.