Michelle Hero Clark is a painter from Yarmouth who has lived in Maine since 1991. Most of her artwork is inspired and taken from the local landscape. She primarily paints from life and on location rather than from photographs or memory. She finds this method of working very satisfying as it combines some of her favorite passions in life, which include hiking, being outdoors in nature, and making art. Of her painting process she writes, “Painting outside provides me with a way to respond and record not only my observations of a place but my subjective experience of it as well. In my artwork I am primarily interested in capturing the essence of places or things as I perceive them rather than documenting a photorealistic scene. In painting on site, one is constantly dealing with the potential for rapid change.  Light, color and often subject are in a constant state of flux.  A cloud can move, changing the shadows and colors, or a dense fog may roll in, obscuring what had been my subject but creating new opportunities to capture something else. Responding to these constant changes gives a sense of urgency and immediacy to the act of painting which I find very challenging and energizing.”

Previous to moving to the state, Clarke studied Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design, and The School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. She earned a masters degree in Art Education from New York University, and has taught art at The Queens Museum in Flushing Meadow Park, NY as well as worked as a full time middle school art teacher in Gorham, Maine for several years. Her paintings have been shown at the University of New England, Maine College of Art, and in The Humboldt Visual Arts Center at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. She regularly shows her work at The Thos. Moser Showroom in Freeport, as well as has artwork in the offices of Brown Chiropractic Wellness Center in Yarmouth, and Marble Harbor Investment Counsel in downtown Boston.