Clarke was born in Simon's Town near Cape Town, in 1929.[3] Much of his work is inspired by that coastal village where he lived until 1972, when he was forced to move to Ocean View under the Group Areas Act. He left high school in 1944 and was a dock worker until 1956 when, aged 27, during a three-month holiday to Tesselaarsdal, a small farming village near Caledon in the South West Cape, he began his artistic career.
With assistance from his lifelong friend, poet James Matthews, Clarke held his first solo exhibition in the newsroom of the newspaper The Golden City Post in 1957. He said, "Before my exhibition, I was just another coloured man. Our people took it for granted that only whites could do such things. Now they are becoming aware of the fact that we can do these things too; that we are human beings!"[This quote needs a citation]
Education
1948: Technical College, Roeland Street, Cape Town, SA
1978-9: Atelier Nord (Graphic Art Workshop) in Oslo
Art career
Clarke was best known for his graphic prints, particularly his woodcuts, and in later years he moved into collage. He also used leather, glass, found objects and other mixed media. He used oil pastels for his art work “October Landscape”.
His artistic career spanned more than six decades and he produced a large number of works and appeared in many exhibitions.[4] Described as a "quiet chronicler", his work offers a critique of South Africa's social and political history over 60 years.[5]
Among the honours Clarke received were 27 international awards in writing and art (Italy, USA and Taiwan), including Honorary Life Membership of the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles (1984); six South African awards for writing and art, including three since 2000—notably the Order of Ikhamanga, silver class (2005);[3] and the Molteno Award (2000) for services to the visual arts, from the Cape Tercentenary Foundation.[8]
1981: Atlantic Art Gallery, Cape Town (Illusions and Other Realities – solo)
1982: South African Art, National Gallery, Gaborone, Botswana
1983: Kanagawa, Japan (International Exhibition of Prints)
1984: SANG (Masterworks on Paper), Kanagawa, Japan (International Exhibition of Prints), Jerusalem Artists' House, Israel, Frederikstad, Norway (Norwegian International Print Biennale)
1985: FUBA (A Selection of Work by Distinguished Black Artists), Grenchen, Switzerland (X Internationale Triennale Fur Originale Graphik)
1987: Chelsea Gallery, Wynberg, Cape Town (solo), Campinas, Brazil (Bienal Internacional de Gravura), Museum fur Volkerkunde, Frankfurt, W. Germany