Gary Andrew Clarke
www.garyandrewclarke.tumblr.com
www.society6.com/GaryAndrewClarke
29 // Designer and artist Gary Andrew Clarke is originally from Leicester but now lives in Manchester, UK, where he studied Graphic Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. Gary went on to work in design for the music industry before developing his own style of graphic art in the late 2000s. Gary’s work features geometric shapes and intense flat colour. He loves the geometric abstraction and hard-edge paintings of the 1960s and 70s. Gary says his artworks have no narrative and are deliberately nonrepresentational: ‘They are not about any dramatic human condition or emotion, and are ultimately devoid of any meaning whatsoever. To quote Frank Stella, “What you see is what you see”.’ Gary’s clients have included Joseph Joseph, and one of his prints is on the wall of Twitter’s London headquarters; his dream commission would be to design for the London Underground. Gary’s ambition for the future is to have his own London exhibition.
Design Heroes: Various hard-edge and concrete artists from the 1960s and 70s
Le Corbusier
A study of ellipses and stripes inspired by the architect and designer Le Corbusier. Gary finds that he never really has much time for art that involves actual pictures of actual things, preferring instead to work with geometric abstraction.
Untitled
A fascination with the magical neatness of the golden proportion often informs the overall structure of Gary’s designs, their internal shapes, and the relationships between the two.
Rainbow Triangles
Cyan, magenta and yellow criss-cross to create further colours in this striking piece.
Ptolemy
A pentagon in a circle is further divided into triangles. Gary's colour combinations are deliberately curious and unconventional, and he has little interest in colour theory.
Triangle with Stripes
Gary’s ideas evolve out of pencil sketches and are then finely tuned and constructed with help from Adobe Illustrator. The end piece becomes the basis for a print, or the study for a painted work.
Boxy Music
This image of four three-dimensional cubes was designed as a print. For Gary the choice of colours is everything, and he dedicates a lot of effort to finding the perfect combination for each work.
Counterpoint
This design utilizes two three-dimensional semicircles, which can look like sliced tubes entering the design from each side. The colours are carefully altered on each tube.