15.6.08

CLARE MENCK

Much of Clare Menck's work has a personal, autobiographic quality. Perhaps it is the generally small scale she prefers for her easle paintings of figures and nudes. It may also be the intimate spaces her subjects occupy and the unexpectedly off-guard moments she captures with a subtly voyeurist gaze.
Aspects of still-life (as can be seen in some rare recent still-lifes) are also picked up in the figure paintings of this solo exhibition, a decade after completing her Master's degree in painting at the University if Stellenbosch. Vignette thus marks her return to the gallery of her alma mater and includes some work dating back as far as 1999 to augment the present work. These paintings elaborate on the simplified figure-furniture combinations that have favoured her attention sporadically yet persistently over 15 years.
Quite aptly, one of the works depicts the artist's son in front of an interior in a frame by Terborch (“Namesakes” 2007), thus paying homage to the Dutch tradition of interior painting.

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