HOA-LAN TRAN PORTFOLIO

MICHAEL J. CLARK

FINE ART PORTFOLIO

ABOUT THE ARTIST

BIRTH: Michael Clark was born December 1950 in Rawlins, Wyoming. He was raised in Sinclair, Wyoming, a refinery company town owned by the Sinclair Oil Corporation. He later appreciated and psychologically identified with the symbolism of the company and the town: the dinosaur.

EDUCATION: Clark was educated at St. Joseph's Catholic School in nearby Rawlins; and later at Rawlins High School. He studied literature at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. He graduated with a B.A. in English Literature in 1974.

WRITING: In 1976, Clark completed his first novel, A Silent Dell, a day in the life of a young man working in the Sinclair Oil Refinery, married, and expecting his first child. It is a story of psychic entrapment; and the resulting explosion of a reality.  

He began work on a major novel, Conversations On a Dying Age, in the summer of 1977; and finally completed the work in 1984. The novel follows the protagonist, Jacob Heimkreiter, in a leisurely stroll into his own death. He has cancer. He spends his days walking through the park, communing with a best friend with whom he plays chess, philosophizes, and confesses his fears and sins--his best friend, in truth, being the reader. Heimkreiter eventually dies and journeys into the formless world of anti-Time, passing through hell, scaling his fears into a land of light, gaining a new set of commandments from the gods on the high mountain where the law-givers reside; he then returns, re-born back into Time, a new man, returning to the body after a long night of the soul. The "dying age" in the title refers to Jacob's own death, the death of his society (economic and moral recession of the late 1970s) and the death of a millennial age.  

He completed a short novel, In His Tar and Feathery Dignity, in 1986. This novel describes an historic incident of persecution of a group of Jehovah's Witnesses in Rawlins, Wyoming, in the mid-1930's.  

He completed a long work of prosepoems in 1989, Instrumentation in the Wheelhouse. The prosepoem is a synthesis of prose writing and poetry, seeking to combine the story-telling capacity of the novel and the rich language and imagery of the poem. Instrumentation is a picture, in an abstract structure, of one life, from pre-birth in the land of the fathers (ghosts of his ancestors), through childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, into approximation again with the ancestors, of whom he is now is becoming one.  

In 1990, he completed another short novel, The Ballad of a Stockbroker, the story of a mystical Wyomingite who appeared in Eugene, Oregon in the mid-1970s, armed with a computerized trading system for stocks and options. He is hired on a trial basis by a local money management firm. His influence slowly wreaks havoc on the conservative, traditional firm.  

He completed a collection of short-stories in 1995 entitled The Death of A Liberal. These stories examine the legacy of the liberalism of the 1960's from the perspective of the 1990's--a middle-aged eye being cast back on the shadows of the idealisms of youth.

 In 1996, he completed a screenplay, Two Friends, based on a Vietnamese folktale.

 Clark is currently working on a major novel, Cross Examination, which examines religion, science, philosophy, language, evolution, the clash of civilizations, fame, madness, obsession, and history. He is seeking a publisher and would appreciate any help that could be given by anyone in this labor.

Click here to access M Clark’s writing page:

http://www.hoalantrangallery.com/MJCwriting.htm

FINE ARTS: Clark has been drawing and painting since the early 1980's. His fine art, like his writings, are concerned with ideas. He considers his fine art to be expressionistic pictographs of the psyche.  Clark's work has been on regular exhibit at the Gallery at Salishan on the Oregon Coast, Due Fine Arts Gallery in Eugene, Oregon, and Silk Road Gallery in Portland, Oregon.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Writing taught me at a relatively early age that the process of artistic creation – at least in my experience -- relies primarily on the ability to hear (for the writer) and the ability to see (for the visual artist). The writer listens to the voice inside himself, which voice is the real creator, he who whispers words out to the surface, words which the writer attempts to transcribe as accurately as possible. The writer is actually a scribe of the divine force living inside of himself.

My writing process is to begin largely ignorant of where I am going, to use primal energy, which is the basis of all origins, to scatter paint (words) on a surface – and then, later, to look back at the words that came out in the primal flow to see where the work wants to go. My approach to painting has been very similar. I will scatter paint or ink on the surface of a board, paper or canvas, and then look at the chaos I have generated in that moment of primal chaotic energy (a small bang in all likelihood) to try to see the form that wants to emerge. Again, the looker finding the form is not my hand but the angel on the inside looking out.

Creation, for me, always begins in the chaos of not-knowing, in the chaos of confusion and dissonance. Then the mind – the force of light inside – creates order out of the discord. In my mind, the first flash of chaos is NOT art, even though much of the modern art movement seems to believe it is. In my mind, art is the conscious organization of chaos into a form which has BOTH meaning and aesthetic beauty. Art that cares not for beauty does not appeal to me. Art that has beauty but no meaning is also dead to me, an incomplete fascination with the dead object. A ‘whole’ art must combine day and night, ideas and technique, substance and shadow, heaven and hell. It must explore both the inside and the outside of an idea.

Artists who have influenced my work, to name a few: Hundertvasser, Chemiakin, Kandinsky, Picasso, Rauschenberg. Artists I admire a great deal: Modigliani, Andrew Wyeth, Escher, Winslow Homer, and, of course, the medieval Germans.

NIGHT PAINTINGS