Brian Clarke’s Dangerous Visions is an early series of paintings created in 1977. In these works, Clarke slashed and reassembled the canvases, creating wound-like forms from which varnish, woodworm killer and glue-size appear to bleed. These fragmented, chaotic sections are juxtaposed with grid-like structures, reflecting Clarke’s ongoing interest in the tension between order and disorder.

This series emerged in direct response to the cultural shift brought about by the rise of punk rock, or new wave, in the second half of 1976. While still based in Birchover, Clarke began travelling frequently to London to engage with the developing music and cultural scene. He later described these works as embodying the social urgency of that period and as a reaction against intellectual mediocrity and the criminalisation of poverty, concerns that led him to recognise “that there was something much greater than aesthetics and skill beyond making a work of art.”

In his 1981 monograph Brian Clarke, Martin Harrison writes of the series:

"The Punk paintings were the direct outcome of culture-shock. The first was Dangerous Visions 1, painted in one night – 'in a state of frenzy.' The single incision is reminiscent of the Italian artist Lucio Fontana’s spatialist canvases. Brian accepts that Fontana was the first to slash a canvas but claims to be the first to patch them up again. In Dangerous Visions 1 it is a deep angry gash and although it is partially covered up with canvas patches, jumbo paper-clips and a safety-pin (an overt punk reference) the ‘wound’ has bled profusely over the lower part of the canvas, the ‘blood’ in this case being a mixture of varnish, woodworm killer and glue-size. City Boy is the most affectionate of the punk paintings. The outline of the bass guitar was taken from Brian’s own instrument, one he did not use during his involvement with a group called The Uncommitted. They advertised gigs and were even offered a television spot, but did not actually play music, though they did discuss the possibility from time to time in 1977."