Southwestern Magazine | Fall 2019

39 SOUTHWESTERN While attending the Celebrating 50 Years of Black Excellence reception, Varner remembered howClark excelled in studio art and that she earned the Lancaster Award in Studio Art, recognizing her as “an outstanding senior whomet the highest standards in art and art history.” Clark graduated fromSouthwestern in 1997 andwent on to earn her master of fine arts fromVermontCollege ofNorwich University in 2000. She has exhibited her work in Georgetown, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta, and in 2004, she was among a group of alumni who were asked to display their work at Southwestern. The Celebrating 50Years of BlackExcellence event was her first solo exhibition at Southwestern. Featuring evocative imagery, such as arterial tendrils enveloping almost illusory circles in Circles Five I and II and the interleaving of geometric and organic shapes in Emotion , the highly personal works ondisplay capturedwhatClarkcalls “ambigu- ities of space, color, form, and chaos—but a coherent kind of chaos.” She explains her philosophy of art thisway: “Creating art forme is to look beyondwhat can visually be seen, to communicate a powerful image on canvas that reveals more than what is immediately apparent. However,my art is notmeant to relay a personal philosophy or any political, social, or cultural commentary on theworld.” Instead, her use of overlapping lines, glazes that create a trans- parency e”ect, and layered colors and textures is intended to reflect the artist’s rich range of emotions and the complexities of her life. “My paintings allow me to express a personal journey of transforma- tion,” Clark says. “Each time I paint, I growand learn something new, and the work itself just tends to transform as I’m evolving.”