Kasia Clarke Biography
Kasia Clarke gave up a career in investment banking in 2003 to pursue her passion as an artist. Those around her who had watched her acquire a Masters degree in Economics and believed she would succeed in the banking industry found her decision to take this bold step somewhat surprising. But Kasia was unable to ignore the pull of artistic expression that she had felt since she was a young child.
Kasia initially went back to college to study studio glass art. She spent several years creating applied art, intermittently pausing for motherhood, before switching to painting full-time, where she discovered her voice under the guidance of artist Nicholas Wilton in his ground-breaking Creative Visionary Program.
Her larger size work, which she frequently creates to commission, required a sizeable new studio which she moved into in 2021. With her husband and three children, Kasia lives in the Surrey countryside, just south of London. She enjoys playing the piano and has a special affection for the music of Chopin.
"I am a Polish-born artist living in the UK, best recognised for my large scale abstract paintings.
My art portrays emotional "places" that are loosely based on the idea of a landscape. These landscapes, however, are imagined, intuitive, soulful declarations of feeling painted in an expressive style; they are not representations of particular geographic locations. Having been uprooted from my home country as a child, my search for a sense of "Home" strongly influences my work.
My works are never planned in advance. I search for and eventually discover my paintings through intuitive mark-making and layering in paint and mixed media. It involves a balancing act between analysis and instinct, letting go and taking control.
I enjoy producing large-scale paintings that invite the viewer to surrender in to their visual experience and become absorbed in the piece. Viewers are uniquely equipped to complete the creative process by combining their own experiences and perspectives into what they see since my paintings are purposefully ambiguous. I love hearing what viewers see in my work." - Kasia Clarke.