click images to enlarge Biography Andy Clarke is a self-taught artist from North Babylon, New York, USA. In 1998, after a particularly painful meeting at work, I looked at some of the doodles on my notepad and impulsively decided to take up brushes and do a painting based on one of them. Over the next few years I continued to paint, at first sporadically and then with increasing frequently.  By 2003 I was painting on a regular basis, and began exhibiting my works at local cafes and bookstores, and in 2005 my paintings were first exhibited in galleries. Painting has become a part of my life, a way to express myself and to keep myself sane. Carl Jung, commenting on the process of creating poetry, wrote of the extraverted type of poet:   “ These works positively force themselves upon the author; his hand is seized, his pen writes things that his mind contemplates with amazement… He is overwhelmed with a flood of thoughts and images which he never intended to create and which his own will could never have bought into being.  Yet in spite of himself he is forced to admit that it is his own self speaking, his own inner nature revealing itself and uttering things which he would never have entrusted to his tongue.” That is the type of painter that I find I am; I don’t choose what I paint, my paintings just come through me, channeling my inner thoughts and feelings in a way that nothing else can. In addition to painting I draw, play on the computer more than I should, and spend far too much time working as a sales analyst. I'm married for over 10 years now to a beautiful woman who loves my artwork and acts as my artist's rep. We have no children and no plans for children, but do have a very cute bunny.   Mission Statement:   As a visual artist, it’s hard for me to write a ‘mission statement’. This is because a very strong basis of my art – perhaps the heart of it – is my inability to communicate.   Words and language are a social construct – they depend upon shared meanings, upon a usage that is traditional and collective.  But such communal constructs are blunt instruments, communicating only to the extent that their users understand and agree upon their meaning. There are things that such words cannot communicate – things too subtle, too individual, too nuanced to be imparted by a shared construct.   The communication of such things, therefore, falls to art. These are the paintings that burst out of me almost fully formed, the things that I cannot keep inside me and cannot externalize in any other way.  I cannot tell you what is in my mind, what is in my soul, but I can try to the best of my artistic abilities to show you such things. What was once only within me, I can now attempt to impart to others.  I can share my innermost thoughts, ask you to join me in my inner world. I can show you my hopes, my fears, and my fancies that you could otherwise never share with me.  That is my art.   Andy Clarke, February 2005 Andy Clarke Arts www.AndyClarkeArts.com