clare menck

Local and international academic art studies have resulted in Durban-born Clare Menck finding her space as one of South Africa’s finest mid-career painters, with self-portraiture as her specialisation.

Her delicate paintings hint at the intimate moments that we all experience. These moments are closely related to the artist, her family and friends, and have developed into a documentation of her public and private life. Meditative in nature, it reflects on alienation and the juxtaposition between the obvious and the newly-discovered.  It is a meditative art. It engages with reality at some distance, either through the mediation of some form of image or through overtly constructed performance in the studio.

In a very real way, this contemplative withdrawal to the studio reproduces the sense of alienation that is her invariable subject.

Clare's work hangs in the Iziko National Gallery Collection in Cape Town, and many more in corporate and private collections worldwide.