A R T I S T ’ S
P R O F I L E
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P E T E R
C L A R K E
Towards Simon’s Town –
the Works Dept at the Dockyard. While doing “all sorts of shore jobs” by day, Peter sat up and painted until late at night and in 1947, attended evening art classes at Saint Philips School in Cape Town. It was during this period that he painted the very beautiful watercolour:
“Towards Simon’s Town from St James”.
A comment by his domestic worker sister to her “madam” about her brother who ‘likes to paint’, led to him being brought to the attention of Dean Anderson, the head of the architectural school at UCT. He bought some of Peter’s work and word of this talented young man from Simon’s Town started to spread. Mathys Bokhorst, the Director of the National Gallery, came to know about him and, thus, in 1951, Peter took part in a group exhibition at the Association of Arts Gallery in Cape Town for the first time. By this time the Clarke family had moved from Wesley Street to the Waterfall Flats in Waterfall Road, where a steady stream of visitors came to view his work. An offer by Maskew Miller to do book illustrations soon followed. While painting was his first love, Peter also enjoyed creative writing and in 1955 he won first prize in a short story competition. The prize money of fifty pounds he happily spent on art materials. In 1956, Peter felt the need to take time out where he could paint quietly and undisturbed for a few months at a time. A friend arranged for him to spend three months at his family home in Tesserlaarsdal, a little village in Caledon, where his friend’s father lived alone. It was at this time that Peter gave up his day-time job at the Dockyard and from then on, for several years, Peter would go to Tesserlaarsdal to paint from September to December of every year. The solitude and serenity at Tesserlaarsdal gave him the freedom to produce many beautiful pieces of art and culminated in his first solo exhibition in 1957. This was held at the Golden City Post. His life as a full time artist and writer had begun. By 1961, Peter’s art was being showcased at exhibitions in England, Germany and the USA and in 1962 he was invited to study printmaking in Holland. A few years later he went to Norway where he studied etching. He also continued to write and one of his stories “Eleven O’Clock: The Wagons, the Shore” was read on BBC radio in England.
‘Cactus’
His parents, though disappointed, decided that if he did not want to go to school he would then need to go to work. Peter became employed at the Dockyard, as a boat cleaner and painter.
Coming and Going
“When the ships came in we would go and clean the ships in Dry Dock and then we would paint the ships. I was 15 years old. A lightie.”
This was during the war-time, in 1944. After the war he found himself unemployed for two weeks and then the Navy re-employed him in
In 1966, a year after receiving the C P Hoogenhout Book Illustration Award, Peter’s personal world became unsettled by newspaper reports that Simon’s Town had become an ‘affected area’ under the Group Areas Act. But it was only when an official came knocking on the door that reality sunk in.
“So we were informed. This official came, took our particulars, how many in the family and then he told us that we were expected to move on a certain date. It was made clear that we would be moving from where we were to Ocean View. Various people were by then moving to Ocean View and the place was becoming more and more deserted. My family were still where we had been all the years and one family higher up were also still in their flat, because at night we could see their electric light going on. And nothing was happening. People were receiving notices to say you had to move and they would disappear, so eventually it was just those two families in that ghost town. It was like living on two little islands of electric light.”
FULL CIRCLE DIGITAL MAGAZINE AUGUST 2013