MAURICE CLARKE ARTWORKS / ARTISTS STATEMENT

Life has to be lived looking forwards but I can only make sense of it by looking back.

My artworks are the result of an ongoing introspective road-trip that is guided by the light of recovery yet firmly anchored by a queer melancholy.

Recalling past moments in time, the lines between memory, fantasy and dreams often overlap or become blurred. Movie stills, religious imagery, family photos and Old Masters are sliced, mashed or layered with a queer-punk-irreverence to create trauma postcards from foreign sounding places with names like:

DESIRE, BELONGING, ADDICTION, IDENTITY, LOVE, RECOVERY among others.

By revisiting and rendering these moments and themes using and mixing various techniques including photography, painting, assemblage and photomontage brings reconciliation and clarity to my here and now: