(Above: Karin Clarke takes a selfie while attending a painting residence in France in May 2019.)

By Randi Bjornstad

Having a solo show of her own work on the walls of her own gallery is a bit of a strange experience for Karin Clarke, owner of the eponymous Karin Clarke Gallery in downtown Eugene where her new show, Paintings from Château Orquevaux, runs through Nov. 28.

Above and below: Several paintings in artist Karin Clarke’s show reflect a new focus on interiors.

“It’s still strange to be talking to people who come in about my own work,” Clarke admitted, “partly because I feel that in terms of my art I am still in my infancy. It makes me feel a little vulnerable, a little awkward, because I’m so accustomed to showing the work of very established artists.”

In those shows — which often include exhibits of paintings by her well-known parents, Margaret Coe and the late Mark Clarke — she’s confident of the artists’ backgrounds, accomplishments, and biographies, Clarke said.

“Then here I am, putting my own work up on the walls, and I don’t feel the same sense of ease,” she said. “I have been doing art on and off all my life, and I’ve only concentrated on oil painting for the last few years, but I do feel good about the work in this show.”

Most of the paintings in the show date to a residency to which she was accepted and attended in May 2019, where she painted lush fields, woods, and buildings dating to the 18th-century in the Champagne-Ardenne region of rural France.

This interior depicts a room in the French chateau at Orquevaux.

But in taking in the show, once in awhile there’s also a surprise painting — a couple embracing alongside a canal in Venice, Italy; a room at Oregon’s Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, decorated in the style and mood of English author Jane Austen; vintage houses on a street in Carmel, Calif. — that Clarke included “because they seemed to have the same spirit to them, a romantic feel of getting away and experiencing something new, something that has been very difficult to do lately.”

In the case of the Jane Austen room in the Newport inn, there’s another connection with the work included in the show from Clarke’s time in France.

“While I was in Orquevaux, I found myself becoming really captivated by the interiors of places, and the hotel room seemed to fit in with that,” she said. “In France, I found an old-fashioned bathroom very appealing — I loved being in that room — and in painting, the image of a woman or child bathing is sort of a classic.”

The show of 28 mostly small paintings also includes another unexpected element: Clarke has painted herself into several of the canvases, sitting at a table brightly lit by windows overlooking the nearby hills; quietly reading at a desk; a nude figure standing near a table.

Sometimes as she paints, Clarke has a sense of the way her parents’ art resides in her.

“Sometimes I will do a brushstroke and suddenly realize how much it reminds me of my mom,” she said. “Or sometimes I’ll be working on a landscape that feels soft and distant, and it makes me think of my dad’s atmospheric approach. Those aren’t always strong feelings, but they do go through me.”

However, her recent studies of interiors feel more like her own.

Many of the paintings in the current exhibit at the Karin Clarke Gallery show the lush countryside in Champagne-Ardenne France

“Neither of my parents focused on interiors specifically,” Clarke said. “My mom incorporates them sometimes, but not necessarily, I think, in the way that I am approaching them. With landscapes, you just get really compelled with what’s in front of you, but with interiors, you become so absorbed with the the thought and planning that went into them and who created them and with what feeling.”

The style of paintings in the Orquevaux show ranges from several done on location that Clarke describes as “a little rougher because done more quickly, but which feel very complete in themselves” to others that she felt “needed to be finished by going back and adding more detail to become interesting in a different way.”

She longs for the time when she can participate in another artist residency, a pattern that has been put indefinitely on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

“After Orquevaux, I was invited back for another residency, but it has been cancelled twice because of the ongoing situation with the virus, and I have no idea when I will be able to do something like that again,” Clarke said. “So I have been trying to create simple ‘residencies’ of my own, taking time to explore pieces of my private world, things I can experience in solitude and then express as meaningful to me and my life.”

Karin Clarke: Paintings from Château Orquevaux

When: Through Nov. 28, 2020

Where: Karin Clarke Gallery, 760 Willamette St., Eugene

Hours: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; also available online

Information: 541-684-7963 or online at karinclarkegallery.com