Clive took his first steps to becoming a full time artist over 30 years ago after moving from his hometown of Arbroath to Edinburgh to study a subject completely separate from his artistic pursuits. However, his passion for drawing and painting have remained consistently to the fore and he has been working as a dedicated full-time artist since 2008.
A great deal of Clive’s work is an attempt to capture the mood or poetic resonance of the places that fire his imagination. As a child, Clive would spend many a spellbound night gazing out of his bedroom window towards the clockwork flash of the Bell Rock, or longingly at the twinkling lights of St Andrews and the villages of Fife’s East Neuk more than 20 miles away across the cold dark sea. He is an unashamed romantic and these dreamlike scenes, alongside his minutely detailed paintings of Scotland’s capital city, are now regular motifs in his work. Since his move to Aberdeen earlier this year, Clive is finding new inspiration in the northeast of Scotland.
Being a self-taught artist, Clive believes there are no set rules within which an artist should constrain themselves and this is evident in his practise as well as his subject matter. Using a mixed media approach, he is equally at ease producing works in oil, watercolour, pen and even etchings, allowing him to combine vibrant palettes with energetic, expressive line and brushwork.
Clive’s paintings and prints have featured in many prestigious exhibitions, including those held annually by the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts, The Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and the Society of Scottish Artists