Clarence Porter

I call my art “playing” and my creations are my toy box full of colour for the viewer’s enjoyment. Whether it’s plumes of soft billowing smoke contrasted against the angularity of steel factory stacks or shadows racing away from their street signs, trees or gas meters, there is a kind of beauty that can be found – if you can see it. We passively look at our surrounding daily but to see is to be actively engaged in the moment. In my art, colours, shapes and patterns all occupy the same importance. I let the contrast of light and shadow separate them out. My job as an artist is to see and translate my visual and emotional moments into pieces that allow you to see, feel and be in my moments. My hope is that my art gives the viewer pause to reflect on a moment in time that I cherished, frozen in pigments.

I worked in the Toronto advertising world as a graphic designer/art director until leaving to become a freelance commercial illustrator: a career move that spanned 40 plus years of creating illustrations for everything from packaging and logo designs to children’s’ books and magazine editorials, while working in a wide range of mediums. After relocating to Hamilton, I started working with pastels for my own pleasure and in 2006 I was juried into the Pastel Artists Canada’s Purely Pastels Exhibition at the Art Gallery of Hamilton where I received an Honorable Mention. That was the impetus I needed to continue working with pastels and I haven’t looked back.

Ongoing sources of inspiration for me are the pastels courses and workshops I teach for adults. I am an instructor at the Dundas Valley School of Art as well as an occasional instructor at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Aurora Cultural Centre. I am also a part-time instructor at Sheridan College in the Visual and Creative Arts Department, teaching figurative painting. I enjoy the interaction with young creative minds. I find collaboration with other artists using different media rewarding and enriching too.