Early Cross Paintings

Brian Clarke’s ‘Early Cross Paintings’ from 1978 to 1979 capture his early explorations of a subject that he would revisit throughout his career.

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Brian Clarke’s ‘Early Cross Paintings’ from 1978 to 1979 capture his early explorations of a subject that he would revisit throughout his career.

In 2019, Clarke explained the lasting appeal of the cross in his work:

‘The cross is the last word in structure. You’re naturally drawn towards that if you have an architectonic sense in your art: it’s irresistible. Once you’ve understood it, and the orthogonal geometries of structure just become part of your second nature, you can really move on, embrace the fluid and the spatial. But for me, the kind of artist I am, I needed that structure, and of course when I used to do life drawing as a student... you’d set down your reference points, and you’d make little crosses where your horizontal and vertical measures meet, and those crosses, of course, get ingrained into you, those little marks. And so, the cross has been a great part of my work.’

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