BIOGRAPHY
Painting is Kay Knight Clarke’s second career after decades in the corporate world. Her work is in private collections as well as the New Britain Museum of American Art, Provincetown Art Association and Museum and Lyman Allyn Museum. June-October 2026 she had a solo exhibit at the New Britain Museum of American Art.
She is an elected artist member of the National Association of Women Artists, CT Women Artists, the Essex Art Association and the Nantucket Art Association. She serves on the boards of the New Britain Museum of American Art (emeritus), Goodspeed Musicals (emeritus), the Florence Griswold Museum, and The Aeroflex Foundation.
Kay has an MFA in visual arts from the Mass College of Art at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a BFA in painting from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. Decades earlier, she completed work except thesis for her PhD in statistics at North Carolina State University, received an MS in statistics from NCSU and a BA with Honors in English literature from the University of North Carolina. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. Her biography is included in Who's Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and other reference publications.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My paintings are about the mystery, power and wonder of the landscape. They are also about abstraction, color, light, the rhythm of shapes, and tension between flatness and space.
The work speaks of hope and beauty, while it recognizes humankind's insignificance within the universe. It aligns me with the natural world and reflects nature's timeless cycle, the ephemeral sense of life, and the question of what else might be. Distant sky and water—with an occasional bow to earth in one form or another—are my favored landscapes. Their vastness and sense of infinity are mesmerizing. I seek to capture the feeling generated by the light, air, and color; it is my spirit. This power of nature is what T. S. Eliot described when he talked of "music that is heard so deeply that it is not heard at all."
Contemplation of nature and painting are related meditations that remove me from my past hummingbird-like activity. I spent most of my adult life in the corporate world. It was fast paced, filled with stress and constraints, but without enough freedom for self-expression or the connection to a larger world that the arts provide.
Freedom is important to me; both the act of painting and the distant views offer that. Focus on the long view combines the abstraction inherent in the distance and its relationship to infinity.
Color is equally important. It is my greatest source of experimentation; color makes me happy. A fifth century Chinese painter and philosopher, Tsung Ping, said that the function of landscape painting is to find joy in one's soul. The combination of color and the abstraction of distance bring me joy that transcends the landscape itself but embodies the power of nature.