~BIO~Clare Shervin

~BIOGRAPHY~
Much of Clare’s work is intricate and detailed and requires close attention and contemplation to allow access to the hidden dream journeys beneath. She aims to find parallels with the way that the mandala operates on the psyche. Her work draws from her unconscious and subconscious explorations of her memories and dreams, stripping away image and style to find the stillness beneath. Often parts of words, text or numbers are scribbled into the work. What do they mean? Clare’s own history of being plucked from one cultural background and given a random new beginning and her subsequent efforts to find a still core to her being informs her ideas of opposites. These could be: the opposites of outward images versus the inward workings of the mind, the fascination with superficial style and image against fantasy, or simply the exploration of the inner self as we are in our naked raw state. Inspired by colour, fashion, textiles, shapes and shadows, Clare frees her pen in an improvised meandering from the deep psyche to the edge of frivolity and back. She draws on the concepts both of Carl Jung’s “Man and his Symbols” as much as Freud’s more conservative thinking.
The breadth of her inspiration ranges from the creative culture of Ireland to the Viennese deco world of Gustav Klimt and Friedensreich Hundertwasser. Fashion designers Zandra Rhodes and Katharine Hamnett both feature in her gallery of visual ideas as do the rich Indian cultural traditions of colour, texture an dance that she has come into contact with on her many working trips round the world. She loves the dance of Isadora Duncan, the poetry of William Blake and the music of Leonard Cohen. Clare has spent many years in the fashion industry based in London and travelled extensively but now lives and works in Bournemouth on the beautiful Dorset coast.