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The state colors.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

In the low, cramped basement studio where he has painted almost every day for the past 40 years, Mark Clarke looked with evident pleasure at the soft layers of acrylic paint he had built up on a small landscape, one of dozens that cluttered the room.

"Some of these are started on location," said Clarke, a hulking white-haired man whose manner is as soft as his moody paintings.

"This one's from memory. That's actually a wheat field. No, it's not a wheat field, it's just a color. I have a spray bottle to keep the paint damped. It softens up the painting and gives a soft edge so you really can't tell what's going on."

Sure you can.

What's going on is Clarke's keen view of the Northwest landscape, a place that, in his vision, is simultaneously dismal and cheerful, obvious and subtle. His paintings are a foggy day at the coast, the muted earth tones of summer in the valley, the rich texture of an Oregon winter sky.

What else is going on in the artist's work is a pure love of color. Clarke absolutely revels in color, not bright neons but odd subdued tones, the colors of moss and mud and dying leaves. He picks up a quart of red oxide, a pigment with which he's lately been enchanted.

"It's just like a jar of rust!" he says. "And I've been using a lot of Indian yellow. I've been buying it by the quart!"

Clarke, one of Eugene's best...

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