Brian Clarke’s Spitfires series was created between 2011 and 2017. The paintings in this series feature black Spitfire silhouettes set against a painterly ground that evokes cloud-like forms within a dark field. In these works, the shape of the fighter plane is transformed into a patterned motif that recalls Clarke’s longstanding interest in heraldry.

In his essay 'Spitfires and Cotton Mills', published in the 2020 monograph Brian Clarke: Spitfires, Clarke explains:

"When the shape is repeated at regular intervals it generates a wholly heraldic pattern that yet, somehow, manages to hold on to the deep throaty growl of history."

The series reflects Clarke’s sustained interest in the Spitfire motif, also explored in his Spitfires drawings series from 2010 to 2017, in the later Summer Solstice Spitfires and Beaverbrook Spitfires stained glass series, as well as in the Lexington Street Spitfires architectural commisison.