Clarke’s work revolves around his confused, convoluted and misguided attempts to understand complicated women real and imagined. He often plays a dominated role of subjugated artist sacrificed on the alter of painting, the fall guy to the scene that has emerged in the unfurling of its construction. This work, Song of Ilium 2011, is a self-portrait in optimistic vein. The artist here is hero, adventurer and poet painted in the colours of the Iliad, like a Greek God looking forward but at the same time still tender and unsure. He is bold yet vulnerable, a fauvist antiquity captured in the bright Puglian sun. Currently living in Puglia, Italy, Clarke has worked in France , Mali, Malta and the UK. The painting exhibited derives from a series of trips to Kerala in the late 90s where the artist found himself first appearing in his paintings. He worked from a hut in the hills using just raw pigment linseed oil and canvas for a month and tried to make sense of the multiple Gods and Goddesses whilst contemplating his choices and direction in life. He placed himself in the painting as the central character yet was somehow still removed and an outsider. The painting displayed has this same hero/anti hero feel intensified by his under researched interest in the intricacies of the relationships between Hindu god worship and the predominantly Christian population. What did he believe in ? He didn’t know.