14 THE ART OBSERVER July 2010 8 Questions for Artist Richard Clare By Sarah Lee 1. When did you develop an interest in Art? I was probably around 12 years old when my interest in Art developed. All my pocket money was spent on art materials, start- ing with a simple box of graded pencils. My parents had a tour- ing caravan and we spent most weekends in Yorkshire and Derbyshire walking, so I think my interest in landscape painting started then. At secondary school I was shy but when I went into the art room I became a different per- son – much more confident and I felt the art room was my per- sonal space. For example, most kids didn’t clean the brushes properly, so at the end of the art lesson I used to go round clean- ing up, making sure brushes were upright in jam jars and tops of paint tubes were on properly and I stayed most days after school working on various art projects. 2. So you wanted to be an artist from an early age. Did you go to Art School? I knew I wanted a career in Art but I also knew it would be hard trying to make a living as an artist, so I wanted to learn a trade that had some relationship with art. After leaving school at 16, I went to study Graphic Design for four years at a college in Sheffield, which covered Typography, Illustration and Photography. It was a very inten- sive course, working to tight deadlines but it taught me about marketing and being profession- al, which I think is important. You might be a talented artist, but if no one knows about you and you don’t have a profession- al approach with galleries, it makes painting for a living that much harder. 3. Have you always been an artist? No. After college I worked as a Graphic Designer for over 15 years, painting in my spare time, but in 1998 after 8 years run- ning a design partnership in Manchester, I decided that if I didn’t try to make a living as an artist now, I never would. Now after 12 years painting I have no regrets about leaving the design world behind. The physical act of painting, interpreting the landscape on a canvas with just a brush and paint is fascinating, and when the work is bought, hung on a wall and enjoyed for many years, this gives me a huge amount of pleasure. 4. You are known for painting in vibrant colours. The colours seem to look right on the canvas even though you use, say orange for grass? Yes, I have thought about my sense of colour many times. Firstly, I am colour-blind with regard to red and green, and I also cannot see subtle shades of colours like most people, so I create my own world in my paintings. Secondly, as a self- taught painter I have no pre- conceived ideas about colour. I don’t want to sound flippant, but when colours are applied to the canvas, they just happen to look right. Maybe it’s a gift or just experience. I suppose it’s like a composer writing music. 5. Who has inspired you? I occasionally surf the Internet to see what other artists are pro- ducing and visit galleries, but I paint in a way that is natural to me. You cannot try to copy another artist as it will look “forced”. I have a wide style to my work as several factors come into play here. It could be my mood when painting, the subject matter, the materials used, the size of the work, and of course how I want to interpret the landscape. When I was a teenager, the late John Blockley RI RWA NEAC RICHARD CLARE ANSWERS QUESTIONS ON PAINTING, HIS PASSION FOR COLOUR AND LIVING IN ITALY Sunset over the Apennines, Tuscany Pale Blue Citroen 2CV, Provence