NAOMI CLARK

Naomi Clark is a multimedia artist splitting her time between Brooklyn, NY and Norwalk, CT. Clark received her BFA from University of Colorado at Boulder in 2004 and graduated with her MFA from Pratt Institute in 2008. She is one of the founders of Fort Makers, an artist collective and gallery.  Clark currently has two solo shows currently up in Brooklyn and Greenport NY and has completed many large installation projects and murals including stage sets for MoMA PS1. Clark has shown both nationally and internationally.

As a young woman, Naomi was drawn to the immediacy and energy of abstract painting. She loved and still does, colour and how colour is ignited when placed side by side through shapes. Throughout her journey as an artist she has consistently tried to understand and translate why she is so passionate about Abstraction. It feels good, it feels free. But why? 

A couple years ago Naomi stumbled upon a book at the SFMoMA gift store by Eric R. Kandel called ‘Reductionism in Art and Brain Science’. Through diagrams, texts and case studies, Kandel illustrates how and where in the brain image processing happens. It turns out that abstraction, (images that can not be placed in the primary visual cortex that keeps us alive by recognising objects, faces, and colour) are processed in an entirely different part of the brain, lighting up an area that we know little about. Reading this, Naomi realised that abstraction strengthens our intuitive connection to the world around us.

Naomi worked with the unexpected variables of the natural environment as a meditation on our environment, space, time and emotion. She created a series of ‘Action Paintings’ (paintings she gives an action to) and installed them around the landscape of the Domaine, whether suspended in the old oak tree next to the 17th Century moulin, or hanging from the traditional Japanese Guesthouse.