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Ed Clark (b. 1926)
Painter

The studio of Ed Clark is located in New York City, near the Jacob Javitz Center on the Hudson River and the infamous Lincoln Tunnel in midtown Manhattan. I visited Clark's studio at 1:30 p.m. on August 27, 2005. I rang the door buzzer at street level to gain access into the tall skyscraper. After Clark buzzed me in, I rode an elevator up 12 floors to Clark's studio, which was the entire floor. As the elevator doors opened, I entered a room that had a magnificent view of the top of the Empire State Building. Vibrant paintings by Clark were on the walls and stacked against the walls.

After brief introductions, Clark pulled out a book aout his life and began walking me through his life using the book as a timeline. Clark told me about his childhood in Louisiana, his life as an enlisted soldier in the United States Army, what is was like studying art at the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois from 1947 to 1951, what life was like living in Paris for five years and studying art at the L'Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris, and his return to America to live and work in New York City as a professional artist.

Today, Clark is internationally recognized as an abstract painter and is known for his use of vibrant color that he applies to large canvases with an industrial push broom. I asked Clark to tell me how he applied the paint on canvas. He told me that he pours wet paint on the canvas and then uses a push broom to make his signature brush strokes on the canvas. I asked Clark to demonstrate this process that he has been doing since the late 1950's, which he later did.