Masters graduate from the University of Stellenbosch with an advanced diploma in Fine Art from Michaelis (UCT), Clare Menck, is renowned for her delightful painterly treatment of light and colour especially when capturing swimmers in water, as well as her constant line of self-portraiture, nudes and unconventional autobiographic portraits of her loved ones and children.
Lately, in a more moody, atmospheric vein, Clare has added painting hounds by pools in the moonlight to her favoured repertoire, along with all manner of domestic animals near sources of water in her latest series of miniatures. The thread of commonality within her various themes is always an uncanny observation of experienced reality portraying a deeper sense of the inner worlds of these human and animal subjects.
She suggests a paradox between our baser instincts (represented here by swimmers and hounds and lush gardens and natural sources of water) and the "civilised", highly contained shapes and design of pools and their surrounding entertainment areas in suburbia which are at times the "stage" for her subjects.
Her retrospective book titled "Clare Menck: Hidden Life" edited by Stefan Hunt, curator of the SANLAM art collection, travelled the country to major museums and galleries as the accompanying catalogue to her mid-career retrospective exhibition, celebrating 20 years of painting. She was included in the Top 40 selection of the SANLAM Portrait Awards twice ( 2013 and 2015).
Clare Menck hosts several popular masterclasses in the form of creative painting/drawing weekend retreats on lifestyle farms in the Cederberg, the Karoo and the Winelands this year.