Creativity Found - an interview with Claire Waite Brown

I was delighted to join Claire Waite Brown recently to record an episode of her fabulous podcast "Creativity Found", which interviews people who find a creative path later in life: people just like me!

You can hear the interview at the link below:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1386667/episodes/15970469-mark-clay-refilling-the-creative-cup

Find out how I started my artistic journey ten years ago at the age of 44 and came to be an award-winning artist showing and selling work in the UK and abroad via an opera company, fatherhood, a masters degree and a nature trail - and a close shave with a banjo!

Thank you so much to Claire for giving me this opportunity and for a wonderful discussion which I really loved and am proud to share!

Mark Clay and Claire Waite Brown (Creatvity Found Podcast) https://www.buzzsprout.com/1386667

"FLOW" - a collaborative online exhibition

The art world is beginning to open up once again after the coronavirus lockdown. I’ve used the time to try and be proactive about what might come after my MFA, and make some proactive applications to competitions and collaborations.

So, I’m especially excited that my drawing “A Crack In The Record” will be a part of a collaborative online exhibition called “Flow”, led by Modern Art Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, and I’m delighted to see it featured in part on MAO’s webpage. The show will open as an online exhibition running from 4 September to 11 October.

Click here to visit the MAO website: https://www.modernartoxford.org.uk/event/flow-online/

Image: Screengrab from the Modern Art Oxford website, showing details of “A Crack In The Record”. (July 2020)

The title “Flow” refers to the immersive, focused and productive state of mind which many people seek to cultivate as a means of being at their most productive, effective or creative,. It applies equally to sportspeople, those in business or academia, and of course to those in creative or artistic endeavours: musicians, writers, visual artists… the list goes on.

“A Crack in the Record” was the perfect piece to submit to a collaboration such as this, because it sits at the centre of a many of the conceptual and practical ideas in my ongoing MA project, the disused railway line to Amlwch, on Anglesey; and also because it works as a telling visual metaphor of the idea of “creative flow” itself. The process of making a large ink drawing by drawing approximately 150 concentric lines itself also opened up a highly absorbing and reflective space in which I could think deeply about what I was doing, and why, as I worked, and to witness that happening in real time throughout the process of creating this piece, which took place across five days. One has a lot of time to think in five days and it was highly beneficial and rewarding.

I’ll be exploring this more with my collaborative partners during the course of “Flow” and writing some more of my thoughts and experiences here on this blog.

Stay tuned!