Tony Clark

I have worked as a creative arts instructor for twelve years, mostly with seniors with varying degrees of ability – dementia, stroke, depression.  In this time I’ve seen vast improvement in their attitude, and sometimes in their physical health, as they work with art, even in those totally new to it; so I’ve come to believe in art as health.

I know that in some cases the work – the doing of art – has kept clients going, so, first and foremost I believe in art as a healthy, giving, empowering expression.  I also believe it has power as good old fashioned work and play.

Beyond this -- and beyond an all embracing love for and wonder at the work of Frida Kahlo – I believe in art as something historically finished: yup – all the styles are used up (except my own, of course); so I post-modernly borrow (“appropriate” is the appropriate word) other artists’ styles – Kahlo, Klimt, Warhol, Fra Angelico, and so on -- in homage but also, I think, in humour. 

I collage and build new images from old, incorporating other images, words, phrases, poems.  I like to think what I do crosses over into photography, mixing it with painting.

However…it’s all playing and at the heart of all play is what defines us and gives us ourselves.

Biography:    

• Born in Toronto. 

• BA in Fine Art and English Lit. at U of T. 

• Bachelor of Education at Ottawa U. 

• Some commercial art experience. 

• Exhibited at U of T, 80 Spadina, Goethe Institute, Toronto.

• Exhibited several times at Stafford Studios, Ottawa.

• Creative Arts Instructor at the Perley Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre, Ottawa. 

• Arts and writing instructor with Artswell, Ottawa (see artswell.ca).