Ann Clarke RCA (born 1944) is a Canadian artist, who creates vibrant gestural abstract paintings and drawings which reveal her formal interests as well as a fascination with twenty-first century technologies.
[2] As Ann Clarke Darrah (1968-1979), she became a prominent member of the art scene in Western Canada, soaking up the light and landscape like a sponge, as she said.
[8] On a trip to England in 1971, she was influenced by the large canvases of Mark Rothko, but the New York School of abstraction in general has been her heritage.
[2] Clarke’s paintings have fluctuated between the completely abstract and the more representational, but in her work since 1997, she is more interested in formal elements, especially composition and expressive colour.
The key for her practice was a meeting with Clement Greenberg at a talk organized at the Edmonton Art Gallery in 1973; she would continue to maintain contact with him until 1987.
[10]Her work is in public and private collections in Canada, Britain, the U.S.A. and Australia in the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane[8][16] Clarke was a founding member of CARFAC in Edmonton.