Interview: Peckham artist Chris Clack

By Victoria Purcell on April 29th 2010

Anne Reckless talks to local artist Chris Clack ahead of Dulwich Open House Studios in May

"I love the fact I live so near Peckham Rye where William Blake saw angels. His mysticism inspires me. There's something marvellous and eccentric..." Chris Clack trails off as I busily scribble notes in his sitting room in Peckham where every free space on the walls and floor is covered with his artwork depicting, in the main, scenes of the Crucifixion, the Descent from the Cross, the Pieta. He continues: "Blake lived in difficult circumstances and yet he still managed to create this amazing work."

Chris, like Blake, is primarily an artist interested in spirituality, or the search for spirituality, having rejected orthodox religion. His religious scenes are not set in Golgotha, but on the Moon; his pieta does not show the Virgin Mary cradling the dead Christ, but a spaceman. He has said: "People ask what I am trying to express, but I can't say I set out to express anything. In the process of working you find things, and show what you find.

"The process of making art can seem a messy business, chaotic at times; what the rules are is never very clear, and when we find rules we then break them as the situation calls, yet out of this comes an order, a sense of meaning. Many artists will say their best work seems is if it made itself."

More recently Chris has been taking what seems at first sight to be a completely different route, creating digital pictures that are abstract and vibrant with colour, with a slightly retro feel, as opposed to the more monochrome religious scenes of his main body of work. "I'm enjoying it," he says. "They allow me to be more free and playful, and who knows, they might eventually feed into my main work."

Another reason for persevering with this new style was presented after he was introduced to a couple who turned out to be interior designers. "They said the work would be good for a particular project they'd been working on and ended up buying some of my larger pieces. Artwork for interiors isn't in your face - and the symbolism is more subdued, enabling it to co-operate with its surroundings." Chris has since started selling this work through several London outlets, including Mrs Robinson in Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, and OneDeko in Spitalfields.

Chris was born in Clapham. He says: "I'm a South Londoner man and boy." His father was a plumber and his mother a cleaner. It was at his primary school that Chris first felt his creativity being nurtured. "It was a free-expression school in the 60s. There was a lot of emphasis on play and creativity. It was there I won my first art prize - my Dad bought me a roll of lining paper and a box of charcoal and I did the biggest drawing I could make. It was a scene taken as if from the inside of a cave of some cavemen coming home with the kill. I can remember it vividly, as you can with certain childhood experiences. I think it was then that I had some idea that this is what I wanted to do. I remember one of the cavemen in the picture was drawing on the wall of the cave, and that's what I've been doing ever since."

Later he attended a large inner-city comprehensive: "That was mainly about keeping your head low to survive - and hanging on to your dinner money! It was pretty horrible, a chaotic situation." Chris went on to fail all his O'levels except art. "Amazingly, they allowed me to stay on in the 6th form to take A'level art. There was a young trainee art teacher called Jonathan Harvey who suggested I apply to art school, which was incredible, considering the careers teacher had decided I should join the Army!" Harvey has since gone on to be Director of the Acme Housing Association, which provides more than 500 artists with affordable studio space in the UK.

Chris won a place at the prestigious Camberwell School of Art and Crafts (now called Camberwell College of Arts). He says: "After the complete chaos at secondary school I loved the discipline. I'd done some pretty surrealist work for my portfolio to get in, typical 6th-form boy stuff, and they said they'd knock it out of me. which they did, and I was very much taught the 'Camberwellian' style. I eventually ditched it, but being there gave me a lot of very valuable skills, especially my ability to draw."

After Camberwell he went on to get an MA in painting at the Royal College of Art. Since then Chris has been very much involved with what has turned out to be a very exciting East Dulwich and environs art scene. He and his wife Louise - also an artist - have exhibited their work as part of the Dulwich open house artists scheme for the past four years. Before that they and their two teenage children lived in Camberwell for 12 years, where Chris was on the committee of the Vanguard Court unit 7 studios and very much involved with Camberwell Arts Festival.

He has also set up two websites to showcase his own work and that of other artists, both local and national. One, www.modernreligiousart.co.uk, is devoted to his modern religious art, which includes photographer Tony O'Connell, who takes amusing snapshots of people posed in such a way they look like they're sporting haloes, including South London gay activist Peter Thatchell.

The latest website, www.dulwichprintsandprinting.co.uk, shows off Chris's more abstract work, and, again, includes work by others such as East Dulwich Polar photographer Louise Murray and the artist Martin Fidler, who, during the Camberwell Arts Festival, organised and led a drawing workshop round the local stomping ground of the 19th-century art critic John Ruskin, who lived in the area.

Chris works almost completely digitally, producing his work on Photoshop and Corel painter programmes and then transforming this into sometimes very large Giclée prints using archival-quality inkjets. And the same standards of production he has for his own work is now applied to printing other artists' work.

Interestingly, one image that often stands out in both his 'religious' and abstract work, perhaps linking them together, is that of a single red gerbera, so sharp it feels like you could touch it. "What is that about?" I ask him. Trying to get explanations from him about his use of symbolism has been like pulling teeth, but this time he says, without hesitation: "It represents the imagination."

Artists’ Open House takes place 8-9 May and 15-16 May, 11am-6pm. Visit Chris’ studio at 73 Oglander Road SE15 4DD. See www.dulwichprintsandprinting.co.uk

Interview: Peckham artist Chris Clack

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