Billie Clarke is most interested in mark-making. In other words, she is mostly focused on the actual rendering of objects and people. In that mark-making or rendering, she hopes to revitalize the excitement of building and image one mark at a time.

 

Her influences tend mostly to some of the giants of Western art history - including artists such as Picasso and Matisse. She says that the elements of deconstruction found often in Picasso’s work serve as a source for her work. However, it is also the work of Matisse and his fluid ‘hand’ that also inspires. Somewhere in that comparison and contrast of two great artists from history, Clarke finds her own language.

 

Though the artist uses a mixture of acrylic and oil paint to build her pieces, she still insists that what she does is drawing. Clarke believes that each and every mark carries with it a special power. The marks refer to a type of description of the object or the living thing that she is depicting. She wants the viewer to be excited by the method of rendering rather than a depiction of an overall image. In her series titled ‘Abstracts (Bird Power)’, Billie Clarke finds a unique power, dignity, and beauty in these living things - In reducing objects to a fundamental essence.