Murray Clarke (b. 1992, United Kingdom) lives and works in London, England. Clarke graduated from Kingston School of Art in 2019 with an MFA in Fine Art. His work currently explores the dichotomy of emotions that surround the commercialisation and mass consumption of fabric and clothing.
Clarke dissects and questions our attitudes and feelings towards such luxury goods by creating paintings that are at simultaneously warm and inviting, and yet at the same time deceptively cold and shallow.
By duplicating the images several times, they are reminiscent of the mass-produced imagery of advertising. This is counter to the traditional view of painting as a unique subject, incapable of being reproduced as we are now presented with the same image painted over and over again, each time moving further and further away from their figurative nature.
Painted in a realist style, the artists presence is not felt within the paintings and so an almost mechanical coldness usurps this initial warmth and we are ultimately left to question our own desires.