I met Ed Clark in the late eighties at Cité des Arts in Paris, where I was granted a studio over a period of time. Ed also used to stay there during his visits to Paris which were fairly regular. That’s how we became friends. Later I moved to a studio at rue Campagne Première in Montparnasse where Ed continued to visit.
I was not aware then how deeply Ed’s influence would transform my personal practice of painting. Watching him maneuver large amounts of paint with a push broom, rags, and sometimes with his bare hands, was an impressive experience. What looked like a very physical process, felt in fact primarily meditative. His paintings arose from inside out. I know now that, unconsciously, it was how I wanted to paint.
He shared with me a profound experience he once had, which illustrates this inner operation. I believe it took place in Bahia, Brazil, where he was offered a work space in a historical building on the beach where the slaves were taken after being disembarked from the ships. He described how one evening, as he was painting, unconcerned with the surroundings, a stranger walked in and stood by the door watching him. When Ed finally paused to assess his work, the stranger asked him: how did you paint the sunset that is happening now without looking at it? Curious to see what the man was referring to, he stepped outside and realized that the man was right. His painting was the exact light of the sunset, the colors of the sky, the beach and the ocean.
Ed loved beautiful women and women loved him. One fond memory involved an impromptu trip to Denmark. I happened to know a charming Danish lady in Paris who was a friend of a friend from New Orleans, where I lived for a few years. She lived in a beautiful old dutch barge on the Seine River near Île Saint Louis; an exceptional spot. We used to visit her from time to time, and one day she spontaneously invited us and a couple of friends to her beach house, on the northern coast of Denmark. We all drove there and spent a few days partying, bicycling, and strolling the endless beach. We harvested wild rose-hip berries all along the dunes and made a huge vat of marmalade. This charming lady had a crush on Ed. It became clear the first night when she announced the sleeping arrangements, landing Ed in her bedroom. Unfortunately the feeling wasn’t mutual and he ended up sleeping in a closet to avoid her advances!
Another memory took place at Cité des Arts, where he met a very young and pretty Japanese girl who fell under his charm. He was beaming as he told me of his good fortune, and that we had to postpone all our plans. He didn’t come out of his studio for days.
In 1992 I left Paris to embark on a journey around the world with my girlfriend Kymberli Johnson. We stopped in New York to see Ed, and ended up staying with him for a few days at his Manhattan apartment next to the Flatiron Building.
He invited me in his studio, a dedicated room in his apartment. I still remember how shocked I was when I walked in, because it was so different from my own studio, which I felt was so sterile in comparison. I had entered a cosmic chaos. The floor was covered with layers of colors, cans, brooms, rags, paint, pigments, paintings everywhere, on the ground and all the way up the walls. Spread in the middle of the floor was a painting in progress of a vibrant translucent sky with arches of light.
The photos featured in this article were recovered from slides that I had stored away for years. I recently scanned them to digital. Their vintage aspect instils the very essence of my nostalgia for times passed with a great artist and friend, Ed Clark.
Photos by Philippe Nault & Kymberli Johnson.
