Paraskeva Clark

Paraskeva Clark (October 28, 1898 – August 10, 1986) was a painter. who believed that "an artist must act as a witness to class struggle and other societal issues." Much of her art now is in the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She was the eldest of the couple's three children and was given four years more schooling than most girls of the time. Her extended education can be attributed to both her father who instilled in her his enjoyment of books and learning In March of the following year they had a son, Benedict, and they made plans to emigrate to France. She immersed herself in conversations with her peers about art styles, including impressionism, post impressionism, cubism and the artists who were central to those movements.

Vasily Shukhayev was a relatively unknown painter and set designer whose students practiced life drawing and painting. The fallout from the Revolution brought about a great upheaval in all the arts. Clark was familiar with the many prominent artists of the time, including Vladimir Tatlin, who believed that they were creating a revolutionary art – Cubism and Futurism – for the new regime.

In years to come, Clark drew on her teacher's concept of tilting the usual verticals and horizontals, she employs this technique in her 1947 painting Essentials of Life. The painting is unified by the tilt of the figure and the slanted architectural elements, reflecting Petrov-Vodkin's influence. She chose to adapt the story of Petrushka (the Peter puppet and symbol of suffering humanity within Russian tradition) to a North American context.

Clark spoke out about the role and responsibility of the artist; she declared:

"Those who give their lives, their knowledge and their time to social struggle have the right to expect great help from the artist. And I cannot imagine a more inspiring role than that which the artist is asked to play for the defence and advancement of civilization".

She urged Canadian artists to "Come Out From Behind the Pre-Cambrian Shield" as she titled an article she wrote in 1937 in "New Frontier".

Political influences Clark's early financial challenges in her pursuit of the arts, because of her working class Russian parents and the revolution in her home country, contributed to her belief in the responsibility of artists to depict class struggle and other social issues in their work. Clark's art from these times reflected her strong political attitude, Petroushka (1937) being the most widely recognised, though the political significance of the work is seen in other works, as in Pavlichenko and Her Comrades at the Toronto City Hall (1943), on which she affirmed her sympathies with the inscription naming the "heroic red army". Her work was to become one of the few politically influenced pieces to survive the era.

Later life Paraskeva Clark's eldest son Benedict was hospitalized and diagnosed with schizophrenia after a nervous episode in 1943, and she put her artistic career on hold temporarily; though even when she resumed painting a year later she struggled to balance the responsibilities of her family life with her artistic ambitions. From 1951 to 1956, Clark gave several large solo shows which were favourably received. Her son Clive was married in 1959 and gave her three grandchildren, which were "a source of great delight" for the artist. In a poor turn of events Benedict was again hospitalised because of his mental health 1957, and this impacted Clarks's production of art in a predictable manner. In 1965, after multiple rejections of her work, Clark resigned from the Ontario Society of Artists. Then in 1974, mother and son shared a show together during which the National Gallery of Canada purchased her piece Myself (1933). Many exhibitions of her work and new projects featuring her art came about in these later years of her life, including a 1982 film by the National Film Board of Canada, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Lady. Speaking of her art in 1974, Clark said "I cannot complain, I have had a very good career, considering a great deal of my time has been spent on being a wife and a mother." Philip Clark died in 1980, and after living for a time in a nursing home Paraskeva Clark suffered a stroke and died on August 10, 1986, at the age of 87.