Throughout his career, architectural artist Brian Clarke has endeavoured to fully integrate his medium within architecture. Widely considered the most important artist working in stained glass today, he has revolutionised not only technologies but also philosophical conceptions of what can be achieved through this medium. Equally important is his pictorial practice, explored in canvas paintings, collages, three-dimensional sculptures and leadworks.

Clarke was born in Oldham, Lancashire on 2 July 1953 into a working class family. His father, Edward, was a miner, and his mother, Lilian, worked at the local cotton mill. His paternal grandmother was a Spiritualist and a medium, a peculiar presence that made him more receptive to art and poetry, as well as the concept that the past remains an alive presence within the present.

Clarke’s first real encounter with a kind of art that was truly grand and elevating occurred in primary school, when he went on a trip to the cathedral city of York. As a young boy, standing in the nave of York Minster, he was overwhelmed by the power of stained glass, a multi-sensory experience that was so intense it made him faint. The magnificent combination of architecture, light and coloured reflection produced a visceral impact that resulted in a deeply spiritual experience.

In 1965, Clarke had the opportunity to attend the Oldham School of Arts and Crafts. Here, he could focus on art subjects which included design, pictorial composition, drawing, lettering and layout, printing and heraldry. This last subject in particular fascinated Clarke thanks to the coat of arms’ bright colour, graphic clarity and sense of vital youthfulness. Many years later, their vibrant, audacious language was fluidly translated into his stained glass works, giving way to a more simplified, abstracted form.

Towards the end of the decade Clarke and his family moved to Burnley, where he attended a foundation course at the Burnley School of Art. Here, he fully came out of his shell. He was now in contact with other artistic-minded students, and could fully absorb the contemporary developments of Pop Art.

It was in this period that Clarke met Liz Finch, an artist unlike any other at school. Immediately forming a meaningful relationship, they would become inseparable and eventually got married in July 1972. Thanks to Finch, he also began to consider stained glass as a means to explore his artistic vocation. Her father, a vicar, was interested in ecclesiastical art and would often have deep conversations about the artistic and spiritual qualities of the medium.

In 1970 both Clarke and Finch were accepted into a course in Architectural Stained Glass at North Devon College of Art and Design in Bideford. While Clarke found the course itself disappointing for the inadequate skills of his tutors, he enjoyed the idyllic countryside of Devon which sharply contrasted with the grey urban Lancashire of his childhood years. Clarke kept studying the stained glass masterpieces of the past, especially the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris, whose socialist vision for the decorative arts resounded with his artistic ambitions.

Toward the end of the Devon years, Clarke was getting ready to complete his dissertation, which focused on York Minster, and was by now convinced that he was going to become a stained glass artist. This decision however came with several difficulties. He wrote to prominent stained glass artists of the period, who all advised him to choose a different path and to avoid a ‘dying’ art. He showed his portfolio to ecclesiastical suppliers, who were shocked at his nude studies and Pop Art compositions. Without any job prospects, he was forced to move back to Preston.

Things suddenly changed in 1974. Clarke was offered the job of repairing the windows at St Andrew Leyland Church, the oldest stained glass in Lancashire. This experience established Clarke more firmly in his double role of architectural artist, allowing him to connect deeply with the fragile beauty of coloured glass within the venerable frame of the church.

In the same year, he was awarded the Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship which allowed him to visit sites all across Europe which were crucial for the historical developments of stained glass, from Johannes Schreiter’s modernist glass panels to the psychedelic, intoxicating colours of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris.

Back in England, Clarke secured important commissions for suites of windows at Longridge and for a large East window at All Saints Habergham, in Lancashire. An abstract rendition of the local landscape, the windows of these early commissions signalled a new, liberated path for his stained glass.

In 1976 Clarke met the art historian and curator Martin Harrison, with whom he organised, two years later, the seminal exhibition GLASS/LIGHT. Piper and Marc Chagall were co-curators and displayed their painterly works alongside the likes of Pre-Raphaelite stained glass panels, Theo Van Doesburg’s modern abstractions and Clarke’s own recent work in stained glass. The aim of the exhibition was to convey the enduring relevance of stained glass throughout history, and to present it as a modern medium.

In this period Clarke worked on an important commission for the new ecumenical chapel at the Queen’s Medical Centre at the University of Nottingham. He was produced 45 paintings, a 120 square feet stained glass and designs for vestments. This occasion was the perfect opportunity for Clarke to develop a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a total work of art which could harmoniously weave discrete artistic elements into a synergy of spiritual vision.

The late 1970s were also a time of radical change for British society, with punk subcultures reacting to the failings of the establishment. This sense of rebellion surfaces in the series of paintings ‘Dangerous Visions’ (1977) in which the canvas is slashed, evoking a painful bodily wound clumsily stitched back together.

At the end of the decade, Clarke gained national notoriety thanks to the BBC documentary Brian Clarke: The Story So Far, a 55-minute feature released in March 1979. Introduced now into a wider art scene, Clarke met the iconic gallery owner and socialite Robert Fraser, who became his dealer and introduced him to Linda and Paul McCartney. They became not only good friends but also, in the following years, fruitful artistic collaborators.

The next decade saw Clarke venturing outside the borders of Britain. He was commissioned by Olympus Europe, a camera equipment manufacturer, to design the lobby of their new headquarters in Hamburg. This project, his first international commission, involved the creation of five windows and three large paintings, which are put in conversation with the modernist architecture.

In 1982, Clarke completed a large project for the Royal Mosque at the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Combining glass, architecture and light, he capitalised on the aniconic tradition of Islamic art to create new forms.

In these years Clarke worked in Düsseldorf, Rome and New York. During this period, he also produced the cover painting for Paul McCartney's solo album Tug of War (1982), designed in collaboration with Linda. Years later, he would also create the stage designs for his World Tour of 1989-90. This experience was particularly revelatory, as Clarke was able to exploit the kinetic effects of stained glass collaborating with a light engineer.

In 1989 he started working on a monumental project, the glazed roof of the Queen Victoria Street Arcade in Leeds. The largest stained glass window in the world, this project encapsulates Clarke’s aim of making art that can be enjoyed by people from all walks of life, and art that rightfully belong to the public. A similar philosophy transpires from a later public commission which saw Clarke designing a series of windows for the Spindles Town Square Shopping Centre in his native Oldham.

The late 1980s and early 1990s solidified Clarke’s philosophy of stained glass as an integral element for contemporary architecture. In 1991, in collaboration with Norman Foster, he installed a series of backlit panels and pillars at Stansted Airport. In 1995, Clarke was commissioned to create windows for the drug company Pfizer’s medical headquarters in New York. He took microscopic images of viruses and bacteria and blew them up in a way that could be immediately recognised by scientists. In this period he also devised revolutionary unrealised projects with major architects, including Will Alsop and Zaha Hadid.

The new millennium opened with a monumental commission. In collaboration with Foster, Clarke designed a large stained glass wall for the lobby of Al-Faisaliah Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The 267-metre-high office tower incorporates, at the base of the building, key elements of Saudi culture expressed through colourful images of flora and fauna. Using new glass technologies, he conceived a pointillistic dot technique that evoked grainy photographic emulsions.

In the following years, several important exhibitions cemented Clarke’s role as a technological and philosophical innovator in the field of stained glass. Brian Clarke: Transillumination, held at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, in 2002, presented for the first time stained glass panels that rejected the use of lead lines to create images. Instead, shapes emerge from coloured ‘dots’ of enamel glass-paint that were permanently fixed onto the raw glass by firing them at a very high temperature.

In 2008, he presented a striking series of leadworks for the Brian Clarke: Don't Forget the Lamb exhibition at Phillips de Pury, New York. In these works, lead becomes the dominant element, with textured inscriptions evoking the artist’s drawing hand and coloured accents made in stained glass.

Thanks to technological developments in the production and staining of glass, in the first decades of the new century Clarke was able to focus more and more on independent glass panels that could be liberated from lead structures. His series ‘Summer Solstice Spitfires’ manipulates light through variously coloured silhouettes of war planes, suggesting ever-changing emotional meanings.

In 2018, the travelling exhibition Brian Clarke: The Art of Light presented Clarke’s stunning free-standing stained glass folding screens which are made of sections held together by black wooden frames.

In 2019 and throughout the grim years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Clarke worked on a large series of works on paper, that combine watercolour and collage elements, titled ‘Vespers’. Loosely based on the bright shades and round forms of poppies, these works merge abstraction and figuration by capturing the flowers’ diaphanous membranes. Later, Clarke translated a selection of these works into autonomous stained glass panels.

In 2022, Clarke was honoured by his native Oldham when the council began construction of a new secondary school named after him. The exhibition Brian Clarke: A Great Light, which opened in June 2023 at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery, London, displays older works alongside a new site-specific installation. Clarke received a knighthood for his services to art in the King’s New Year Honours list 2024.

Throughout a career spanning five decades, Clarke has consistently sought to elevate the medium of stained glass and fully integrating it within architecture for everyone to enjoy. In the artist’s own words:

‘I believe that the medium has the potential of having the same kind of uplifting impact on the urban fabric as it had on architecture in the 15th century. The idea of bringing that kind of liquid, fluid, transparent colour into our daily experience… Once you’ve tasted it, you really want another lick at that lolly.’