Brian Clarke R.I.P.

Renowned stained-glass artist, Brian Clarke, died on July 1, 2025 at the age of 71. In my Church Times review of “Brian Clarke: A Great Light” at Newport Street Gallery in 2023, I wrote that: 

'I FIRST encountered the work of Brian Clarke at the Swiss Museum of Stained Glass at Romont. I visited the Museum as part of my Sabbatical Art Pilgrimage and discovered that work by Clarke and another stained-glass artist, Yoki — neither of whom was previously known to me — could be seen in the town, as well as at the Museum.

The Cistercian Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu on the edge of Romont commissioned Clarke in 1996 to create windows for its renovated and reordered chapel. Clarke says that stained glass “can transform the way you feel when you enter a building in a way that nothing else can”. I would concur, especially after arriving at l’Abbaye de la Fille Dieu in time for a memorable service of vespers, followed by silent contemplation in the still onset of darkness falling. Clarke’s modern, abstract windows were designed to unify fragments retained from previous phases of the building’s life and offer both nuns and visitors a “warm and vibrant atmosphere”, which is “conducive to meditation and prayer”.'

Church commissions helped establish Clarke as a stained-glass artist in the early stages of his career, and later works, such as those at Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu and Linköping Cathedral, Sweden, confirmed his ability to bring together technical skill, creative vision and sensitivity to place. His engagement with aspects of spirituality and contemplation also appeared in his work for secular spaces.

He said: "I think there is an extremely powerful argument to be made today for art to actually bring beauty and something of the sublime into the banality of mundane experience. So often now, art is limiting of that kind of encounter. I believe people respond to beauty both in nature and in art. When it involves the passage of light, it is uplifting in a way that is incomparable".

Read my review here and my visit report to Abbaye de la Fille-Dieu here.

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The Trees Community - Psalm 45.