COVER TO CANVAS ARTIST OF THE DAY – Alan Clarke, Illustrator, Visual Artist, and Occasional Writer

Alan is an award winning illustrator. His images conjure worlds that are whimsical, darkly comic, magical, sometimes grotesque, but always beautifully executed.  A sustained originality and novelty in the concepts behind the work, married with its painstaking execution makes his work quite unique. His book illustrations have garnered widespread acclaim.

Art Work Titles

‘Ars Moriendi’ (The Art of Dying)

‘Ars Vivendi’ (The Art of Living)

The Ars Moriendi (The Art of Dying) is a Latin text dating from the early fifteenth century which offers advice on the protocols and procedures of a good death, according to Christian precepts of the time. It was written within the historical context of the effects of the macabre horrors of the Black Death 60 years earlier and consequent social upheavals of the 15th Century. There was originally a “long version” and then a later “short version” containing eleven woodcut pictures as instructive images which could be easily explained and memorized. The King’s Inns Library contains a facsimilie of the short version complete with reproductions of the original woodcuts.

Alan’s first image/artistic response to this text is a fictional imagining of the composing of ‘Ars Moriendi’. While it is thought that the original text was composed by an anonymous Dominican Friar, the artist has imagined the composition of the text as a struggle between the two forces who might be at odds over the dying man’s soul.

The second image is called ‘Ars Vivendi’ (The Art of Living). It was made simply as a counterpoint to the first image, playfully referencing some of the things that are deemed in ‘Ars Moriendi’ to ill–prepare one’s soul for the next life! 

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