The National Sporting Library & Museum (NSLM) recently opened 'A Sportsman en plein air: C. D. Clarke,' an exhibit that will be on view until December 28, 2014. The traveling exhibition of twenty-one watercolors and oil paintings, curated by Claudia Pfeiffer, the NSLM's George L. Ohrstrom, Jr. Curator of Art, will proceed to Pebble Hill Plantation in Thomasville, Georgia, and be on view there from January 8 to April 30, 2015.

C.D. Clarke has come a long way since graduating from Syracuse University in 1981 with a B.F.A. in Painting and Illustration. While at college, he studied studio art at the tail end of the abstract expressionism movement. He already looked to the outdoors for subject matter, but influenced by his schooling, Clarke first produced oversized abstracted wildlife paintings. Even though he spent his last year with more traditional professors, he reminisces in retrospect, "Maybe I would have been better off going to one of the Old Master– type schools versus a contemporary one."

After completing college, Clarke ranged around to earn a living, taking on odd jobs riding on the back of a garbage truck, planting trees, and waiting tables, but most of all he wanted to paint.

"Plein-air watercolor was a way to keep any kind of art going, to go out the back door, and be painting right away," he underlines.

Much like the life he leads, Clarke has his own distinctive, rugged painting style. In his compositions, the artist looks to a balance between draftsmanship and painterly looseness. Color values from light to dark are carefully planned, delicate washes applied, and confident lines, sometimes light, other times bold, are highlighted or underscored. His compositions have a timeless and untouched appeal, capturing the essence of his experience, mirroring the moment for others to recognize.

Clarke is not good with dates, and looking to his paintings to establish a chronology is sometimes difficult. There is no doubt, however, that his almost thirty-year sporting art career began in 1986 when his submission, a still-life in watercolor of a black duck, aptly titled, The Limit for Now, was selected for publication in Gray's Sporting Journal. Since then, Clarke's work has been chosen for illustration in the noted field sport magazine several times a year, including assignments to accompany sporting writers Terry Wieland and James Babb to paint scenes for their articles.

Clarke's work has also appeared in Fly Rod & Reel, Field & Stream, and Sporting Classics.

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