February 18th, 2026Artists of the Central Highlands
Clunes artist Colin Clark grew up in the UK, just north of London where his family had a diverse range of interests with the artistic side very much in the world of music rather than the visual arts. His father was a huge opera fan and as a teenager Colin used to join him regularly in the cheap seats at the Royal Opera House. Colin’s sister was the one who inherited the musical talent however, while he inherited his father’s sporting prowess playing a lot of cricket and hockey. There was not a real arty career for Colin although he did deal with creative designers during his time in product engineering at Jaguar and Ford. Colin and his partner moved to Australia in 2004 after a job at Ford in Australia sort of fell into his lap while they were on a one-year sabbatical travelling round the world.
Donna: When did you know you were an artist?
Colin: I love this question because it gets to the heart of imposter syndrome. I have a huge cognitive dissonance between how I see myself and how I see others. I think that anyone who does art has the right to call themselves an artist in the same way as anyone who plays golf has the right to call themselves a golfer. At the same time, it took a while to consider myself as one, probably when I started to sell some pieces and win some awards. I am a real advocate of just doing art for the enjoyment of it. It seems to me that we love it as kids and then we go to school and come across some super-talented classmates and then give up. We don’t really do this in other things so why do we do it in art? We call our studio “The Crap Art Studio”, a bit tongue-in-cheek these days, but just to remind ourselves that it’s about doing it and sometimes pushing boundaries and that it doesn’t matter if some of what comes out is not very good. You can still enjoy making it and you always learn something, even if it’s just not to do that again.
Donna: What attracts you to print and lino?
Colin: I have worked in many media, and continue to do so, but I just get drawn back to printing. There’s something quite cathartic about carving away at a piece of lino and also a sense of not 100 per cent knowing what it will come out like when I pull that first proof.
Donna: What images are you drawn to?
Colin: I am drawn very much towards contemporary art. I have seen enough landscape oil paintings and portraits of inbred nobility to last a lifetime. I would much prefer to see something new, clever and innovative.
In my own work I do feel some tension between what I really want to do and what I think will sell. I still get surprised sometimes by which artworks sell well and it is often not the ones that win awards. Definitely things with a local theme are popular. For example, I created a street scene of Creswick for a shared exhibition at Art on Albert in the town and that was the top seller. Animal and bird themes are also popular. I guess you just need to create something that a few people really love rather than something that most people quite like.
Donna: I see you have won quite a few awards…
Colin: I won three prizes last year in regional art shows at Bacchus Marsh, Beaufort and Avoca. Two were for my artwork Uncle which was something I created using a new, experimental technique.
I was inspired by old black-and-white newspaper photos which, if you looked closely, you could see were printed using varying sizes of dots to create a convincing greyscale picture. I decided to try to do the same thing using a Dremel with different drill sizes to make the different dot sizes. My first trial image was not perfect but promising and I then created Uncle, an image of an imaginary Aboriginal elder, which I was very happy with.
Donna: Second last question, why Clunes?
Colin: We were inspired to convert a house to be totally sustainable after reading the book Sustainable House by Michael Mobbs. It all seemed a bit too hard to convert our Altona house for a variety of reasons so we decided to find some land and build one from the ground up. We looked all around Central Victoria but really fell in love with the Clunes area and found the ideal block on the corner of Clunes State Forest where we designed and built (literally) our off-grid, straw bale house. It is located on 70 acres of pristine forest and is the perfect place to create in peace away from the hustle and bustle of the modern world.
Donna: Where can we see your work?
Colin: I currently have works in a few galleries. I have some prints at Castlemaine Market Arts Show in the Visitor Centre and in Gallery 127 in Avoca. I also have a small exhibition but with lots of prints in a flip-box at TBH Studio in Bridge Mall, Ballarat and some of my digital work is on display at Art on Albert in Creswick. I am in discussions for a solo exhibition at Gallery 127 later this year and will no doubt be entering work into various Rotary and other art shows. You can find me on Facebook at CC Art Printmaking or on my brand new website at www.ccartprintmaking.com
