This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| This biography, submitted May 2005, is from the artist.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Larry Graham Clarkson grew up in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. He took special classes in art and design in high school and was awarded an outstanding student award by the state of Utah. As a graphic design student at the University of Utah he spent the summer prior to graduation in Europe visiting art museums and writing a paper on Michelangelo. Viewing the works of Monet, Van Gogh, and Matisse in the "Impressionist Museum" in Paris was to have a much deeper effect on Clarkson than he realized at the time.
In 1976 he graduated from the University of Utah with a BFA degree in art and design and followed with two more years studying design at the University of Illinois. He graduated in 1978 with an MFA degree and moved back to Utah with his wife and son to begin a career as a graphic designer. As a principle partner in a well-known design firm and later the president of a large ad agency, Clarkson created graphic communications for corporate clientele for more than twenty years. He won over 300 awards of excellence, and his design work appeared in many books and virtually every important graphic design magazine and publication in the country and abroad.
In 1983 Clarkson was invited with 99 other artist/designers in the United States to create an "Image for Survival" for the "Hiroshima Appeals Show." The work was exhibited at and is part of the permanent collection of the MOMA in New York City and the Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art in Hiroshima, Japan.
About the same time Clarkson stumbled upon an opportunity to purchase a lease on a small-dilapidated cottage in the historic beach community of Crystal Cove, near Laguna Beach, California. What started out as a six-month rental turned into twenty-years of monthly visits and summers at the beach for Clarkson and his family. It was in the galleries of southern California that Larry happened upon the paintings of the California Impressionists. He was particularly moved by the mountain paintings of Edgar Payne and William Wendt, and the desert paintings of an 'obscure western' painter by the name of Maynard Dixon. Like the European impressionists, these American painters were to have a big effect on Larry's future.
When he wasn't designing or teaching design as an adjunct professor at the U of U, BYU, or Westminster College, Clarkson was outdoors. He skied, hiked, climbed and sketched the dramatic landscapes where he lived - the high alpine mountains surrounding Salt Lake City - and the redrock deserts of the southern part of Utah where he built a second home. In the late eighties he purchased a small plane, secured his pilot's license, and began exploring the Utah wilderness by air, often landing at remote dirt strips for back country day-hikes and overnight camps. Inspired by the landscape, in 1993 he co-founded and became president of the Entrada Institute, an arts organization that celebrates the red rock desert of Utah. Five years later Clarkson stepped down to spend his free time hiking. It was during this period that he started to translate his wilderness experiences into art.
A chance meeting at a party lead to an invitation by painter Gary Ernest Smith, another Dixon enthusiast, to visit Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. Clarkson took along a sketchbook, and Smith was so impressed by Larry's doodles that he challenged him to try his hand at painting. In the beginning most of Clarkson's paintings were created en plein air - painted outside within the landscapes that inspired them. Later under the encouragement of Gary he began working on larger pieces in his studio. To this day Larry, Gary and another artist friend, Ed Mell, meet annually at Clarkson's back country cabin to paint outdoors for a week.
In 2001, while Clarkson was designing the new Utah Travel Guide for the state of Utah, the Utah Travel Council commissioned him to paint twelve Utah landscapes for the upcoming 2002 Olympic Edition. That same year one of his paintings,
Tree of Life, won Best of Show at the first annual Maynard Dixon Country Invitational. Clarkson held his first one-man show during the Olympics in Salt Lake City, and most of the originally commissioned pieces were sold. During the next couple of years his paintings were featured in Art-Talk and Southwest Art and exhibited at the Springville Museum of Art and Art Access. He won cash awards in local plein-air competitions, and began showing his paintings in galleries in Utah, Arizona and Colorado, all the while creating brochures and advertising for his corporate accounts.
A third influence on Clarkson's work was prompted by a trip he made to New York City in the late eighties. Larry and his design partner wished to transform the Salt Lake Art Directors club into a chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Artists. Clarkson was past president of the club, but was no longer on the Board, so he was excluded from the meetings when he got to New York.
What seemed like a disappointment at first became a lifetime opportunity. Clarkson spent the week visiting every art museum and gallery in the 'Big Apple'. It was here that he experienced abstract expressionism up-close. The color, scale and emotionalism of Mark Rothko's field paintings, the design and illuminosity of Richard Diebenkorn's work, the visceral paint quality of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and the abstract quality of Monet's giant lily paintings at the MOMA rocked Clarkson's pre-conceived notions of fine art. He became aware of the visual dichotomy of creating a three-dimensional illusion on a two-dimension plane, while at the same time attempting to hold allegiance to both.
As such, Clarkson's paintings are representational, but strong in expression and design. His technique plays with the physical characteristics of oil paint and surface. He uses a palette knife to mix color, build-up paint on board, then scratch it back out again. He then applies tinted transparent glazes to the final image after the impasto paint has dried. It is difficult to portray detail with a knife so Clarkson's paintings are stark and sculptural. He makes up for the simplicity with texture and impressionistic color. His plein-air studies have made him a stickler for color values, and he is always pushing for quality of paint: "When I use a knife I feel as though I am creating the landscape out of paint, rather than painting it".
In May of 2005, after the untimely death of his father, Larry Clarkson began painting full-time. The transition from successful designer to struggling fine artist has been a challenge financially, but his family has been supportive. When Clarkson is not in his studio, he still skies, hikes, and climbs the high alpine mountains and wanders the redrock deserts of the west, but with his paintbox and camera in tow.
Publications/Periodicals:
Utah Travel Guide- 2002 Olympic Edition, "Utah Landscapes"
Pages: Cover, 3-5,16, 18-19, 22-23, 26, 30, 32-22, 36, 46-47, 52, 72-73,
Color Plates
JAL Winds Magazine, August 1985, "Celebrating Peace", Pages: 18-31, Color Plates
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