L A R R Y  G R A H A M  C L A R K S O N

B I O G R A P H Y

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Larry Graham Clarkson grew up in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains. He took classes in art and design in high school and was awarded an outstanding student award by the state of Utah. As a graphic design student at the University of Utah he spent the summer prior to graduation in Europe meeting with faculty at the Basel School of Design, visiting art museums, and writing a paper on Michelangelo. The graphic design he saw in Germany, Switzerland, Holland and northern Italy had a big effect on his future design work, but viewing the works of Monet, Van Gogh, and Matisse in the “Impressionist Museum” in Paris was to have a much deeper effect on Clarkson than he realized at the time. In 1976 Clarkson graduated from the University of Utah with a BFA degree in graphic design and followed with two more years studying design communications at the University of Illinois. He graduated in 1978 with an MFA degree and soon moved back to Utah with his wife and son to began his professional career. As a principle partner in the successful design firm Smith+Clarkson, and later the president of the ad agency ClarksonTwede, Clarkson created graphic communications for government and corporate clientele for more than twenty years. He has won numerous awards of excellence, and his design work has appeared in many books and virtually every important graphic design magazine and publication in the country and abroad. In 1983 Clarkson was invited with 99 other graphic designers in the United States to create an “Images for Survival” poster for the “1985 Hiroshima Appeals” Exhibition. The work was exhibited simultaneously in Washington, DC, New York City, Tokyo, and Hiroshima, and is in the permanent collections of many international museums of art. About the same time Clarkson stumbled upon an opportunity to purchase a lease on a small-dilapidated cottage in the historic beach community of Crystal Cove, near Laguna Beach, California. What started out as a six-month rental, turned into twenty-years of monthly visits and summers at the beach for Clarkson and his family. It was in the galleries of southern California that Larry happened upon the paintings of the California Impressionists. He was particularly moved by the mountain paintings of Edgar Payne and William Wendt, and the desert paintings of an ‘obscure western’ painter by the name of Maynard Dixon. Like the European impressionists, these American painters were to have a big effect on Larry’s future. A third influence on Clarkson’s painting was prompted by a trip he made to New York City in the late eighties. He and his design partner wished to transform the Salt Lake Art Directors club, of which Clarkson was a past president, into a chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Artists. To his delight, Clarkson was not needed in the organizational meetings when he and his partner visited the AIGA, so he took advance of the opportunity. He spent the week visiting every art museum and gallery in the big apple, and it was here that he experienced abstract expressionism up-close. The color, scale and emotionalism of Rothko's field paintings, the design and illuminosity of Diebenkorn, the visceral paint quality of Pollock and de Kooning, and even the abstract quality of Monet's giant lily paintings at the MOMA rocked Clarkson's pre-conceived notions of painting. He became aware of the visual dichotomy of creating a three-dimensional illusion on a two-dimension plane, while at the same time attempting to hold allegiance to both. When he isn’t designing or creating art, Clarkson is outdoors. He skis, hikes and paddles the dramatic landscapes where he lives – the high alpine mountains surrounding Salt Lake City – and the redrock deserts of the southern part of Utah where he built a second home. In the late eighties he purchased a small plane, secured his pilot’s license, and began exploring the Utah wilderness by air, often landing at remote dirt strips for backcountry day-hikes and overnight camps. Inspired by the landscape, in 1993 he co-founded and became president of the Entrada Institute, an arts organization that celebrates the red rock desert of Utah. Five years later Clarkson stepped down to spend his free time hiking. It was during this period that he started to translate his wilderness experiences into fine art. A chance meeting at a party in the late 1990's lead to an invitation by painter Gary Ernest Smith, another Dixon enthusiast, to visit Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. This trip was later chronicled in a talk Clarkson gave as part of Utah State’s official “Maynard Dixon Day” celebration in 1998. Larry took a sketchbook along on the trip and Smith was so impressed by Larry’s doodles that he challenged him to try his hand at painting. In the beginning most of Clarkson's paintings were created en plein air – painted outside within the landscapes that inspired them. Later under the encouragement of Gary he began working on larger pieces in his studio. To this day Larry, Gary and another artist friend, Ed Mell, meet annually at Clarkson’s red rock desert home to paint outdoors for a week. In 2001, while Clarkson was designing the Utah Travel Guide, Olympic Edition for the state of Utah, the Utah Travel Council commissioned him to paint twelve Utah landscapes for the Special Guide. Clarkson held his first one-man show during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City and most of the originally commissioned pieces were sold. Later that same year one of his paintings, “Tree of Life” won Best of Show at the first annual Maynard Dixon Country Invitational in Mt. Carmel, Utah. During the next couple of years his paintings were featured in Art Talk and Southwest Art and exhibited at the Springville Museum of Art and Art Access Gallery in Salt Lake City. He started to win cash awards in regional plein air competitions, and began showing his paintings in galleries in Utah, Arizona and Colorado, all the while running his design firm and creating brochures and advertising for his corporate accounts. After the unexpected death of his father in 2004, Clarkson took a year away from design to paint and think. Then in the fall of 2005 his life took another turn when he was given the opportunity to give back to the profession that had provided him a livelihood. He accepted a one-year teaching position in the Department of Visual Arts at Weber State University. His interaction with the department's illustrious international faculty and his enthusiastic students was invigorating and renewed his interest in the creative process that had so enriched his life. In August of 2006, Clarkson was invited to join the full-time faculty at the Department of Visual Arts at Weber State University in Ogden, where he is now Assistant Professor of Art and co-director of the Visual Communications program. Clarkson now creates design, teaches, makes art and writes. He is owner of Clarkson Creative, a small Salt Lake City visual communications consulting group, where he continues to design projects for a select group of clientele, including the Utah Office of Tourism for whom he creates the annual Utah Travel Guide and the Official Utah State Map. During the summer months he paints plein-air landscapes in and around his summer home in Torrey, makes multi-media constructions, and writes poetry expressing his interaction with the natural world.