Clare Woods
Painting
Clare Woods
Painting
Clare Woods, who graduated from the Goldsmiths’ College in 1999 and originally trained as a sculptor, is today one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic contemporary painters.
Her distinctive paintings, which are rooted in the English landscape tradition, over time, have expanded into a wide visual language that includes still life, interiors or portraits and figures.
The paintings are based on photographs that are sometimes from the artist’s own collection and at other times grounded in imagery from newspapers and magazines. The original photographs are cropped and edited by drawing through the forms to remove elements of them, so that they begin to sit on the edge of legibility and figuration. Woods conceptually empties the source image to replace it with a new interpretation, often symbolically charged, during the act of painting. This physical breakdown of the image, which forces a slowing down and falling apart of the visual, entices the viewer to question their ability to decipher the content of what is in front of them, and to question what it means to live in a time of the mass consumption of imagery in a world that treats banality and disaster in the same way.
Although Clare Wood’s work cannot exist without photography, it is not the origin of the image that is important to her; she is concerned with the emotional response the imagery triggers within her and its potential for reinterpretation or translation, as she is always preoccupied with the human environment and her personal desire for certainty.
In the artist’s unique painting style, with finger-wide, tangled brush strokes that create a peculiar three-dimensionality, lies a connection to sculpture. It seems as if Clare Woods is sculpting the image in paint.
Clare Woods’ work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Hepworth Wakefield in Yorkshire, the Southampton City Art Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery in London, the Mead Gallery in Coventry and the Serlachius Museum in Finland, among others.
The artist has also executed several permanent public art commissions, including for Carpenter’s Curve at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London (2010–12), the VIA University College in Aarhus, Denmark (2014) and at River Bend in Dallas, Texas (2019).
Works in public collections include those at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; ARKEN Museum of Modern Art in Denmark; the Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation in Athens; the Hobart Museum in Tehran; and The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.
Clare Woods was born in 1972. She lives and works in Hereford, UK. The Buchmann Galerie has represented Clare Woods since 2008.
Further insights into the artist's work can be found in the catalogue Clare Woods, As I Please, Art/Books, 2024.

Selected Works
News
Gallery Exhibitions
Publications
Clare Woods
Born 1972, lives and works in Hereford, UK
1997 - 99 | MA, Goldsmith’s College, London |
1991 - 94 | BA, Bath College of Art, Bath |
2022 | Elected to Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK |
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
Arken Museum of Modern Art, Ishøj
Arts Council Collection, London
British Airways Art Collection, London
CCA Andratx, Mallorca
Colección VAC (Valencia Arte Contemporáneo), Valencia
Government Art Collection, London
Harewood House, Leeds
Honart Museum, Tehran
Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge
Mead Gallery, Warwick University, Warwick
NationalCollection of Wales, Cardiff
Nuffield College Collection, Oxford
Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton
The British Council Collection, London
The Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation, Athens
The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield
The Hiscox Collection, London
The Hive, Worcester
The National Museum, Cardiff
The Ophiuchus Collection, Geneva
Tulle House Museum & Art Gallery, Carlisle
VIA University, Aarhus
2022 | Clare Woods: Between Before and After, Serlachius Museum Gösta, Mättä, Finland (exh.cat.) |
2018 |
Reality Dimmed, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Center, UK (exh.cat.) H. Juddah: Clare Woods, Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK, Frieze, April |
2017 |
Victim of Geography, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, UK (exh.cat.) |
2016 |
The Romantic Thread in British Art, Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, UK (exh.cat.) A. Marr, J.Higgie, M.Bracewell, R. Daniels, S. Martin, Clare Woods Strange Meetings, Art Books Publishing, London, UK |
2015 |
Imagining A University, Fifty Years of The University of Warwick Art Collection, Warwick University, Warwick, England (exh.cat.) |
2014 |
A Tree A Rock A Cloud, Clare Woods (The National Collection Of Wales, Oriel Davies, Wales) Brask Collection at Munkeruphus (Munkeruphus Art Museum, Gilleleje, Denmark) Under the Greenwood, Picturing the British Tree from Constable to Kurt Jackson (St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery and Southampton City Art Gallery, Lymington, UK) |
2011 |
Bracewell, Michael & Stephens, Chris: The Unquiet Head, Hepworth Wakefield, (exh.cat.) |
2010 |
Nash, Paul: The Elements, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, essay by Simon Grant (illustrated in colour, p. 41) |
2009 |
The Dark Monarch, Magic and Modernity in British Art, Tate St Ives (exh.cat.) Bracewell, Michael: Something Supernatural, This Way Comes, Tate etc., Autumn, pp.62-67 Dillion, Brian: Disc World, Guardian Review, 24 October, p.18 |
2008 |
Superstratum, Koraalbery Gallery, Antwerp, Belguim (exh.cat.) Hussey, Lauren. Interview: For Display Purposes, October, p.13 |
2007 | Colección VAC (Valencia Arte Contemporáneo), Catalogue of works, Valencia |
2006 | New Art from London, Chris Townsend, Thames and Hudson ESENCIAS 11, exhibition catalogue, Coleccion Ernesto Verntos, Arte International Deaf Man’s House, text by Barry Schwabsky, Koenig Books, London Review. Wright, Karen. Modern Painters, February 2006 Review. Neo 2, February, 2006 Chisenhale Gallery, London (exh.cat.) |
2005 |
Extreme Abstraction, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, (exh.cat.) Make 2', Ken Shuttleworth Herbert, Martin. Feature. Ambient Landscapes, Tate etc, Summer 2005 |
2004 |
Monument to Now, Deste Foundation of Contemporary Art, (exh.cat.) Printed Project, letters from five continents, Saskia Bos & Rob Tufnell Forest, Wolverhampton Art Gallery, (exh.cat.) Failed Back, Modern Art, London (exh.cat.) New British Painting, John Hansard Gallery, (exh.cat.) Herbert, Martin. Review. In: Time Out, London, March 17-24, pg 47 |
2003 | 40 Views of and Icon, Comme des Garcons |
2002 | Painting as a Foreign Language, Edificio Cultura Inglesa (exh.cat.)
Hill, Joe. Review. ‘New York: Cohan, Leslie & Browne’, in: Contemporary, December 2002 Smith, Roberta. “Review Clare Woods”, in: The New York Times, Oct. 25, pg 37 |
2001 |
The Hydra Workshop, Hydra Greece, (exh.cat.) Tail Sliding, The British Council, (exh.cat.) London Underground, Sungkok Art Museum, Korea, (exh.cat.)
Beck’s Futures, ICA, London, (exh.cat.) |
2000 | British Art Paintings II, exhibition catalogue, Diehl Vorderwuelbecke, Berlin The Art Newspaper, Review. no 108, November Review. ‘Art, Clare Woods’, in: Evening Standard, 26th October Allfree, Claire. Review. ‘Art, Clare Woods’, in: Metro Life, Metro, October 27th Gleadell, Colin. Review. ‘The Power of Paint’, in: Telegraph Magazine, p.37, September 16 Review. ‘And if There Were No Stories’, in: Evening Standard, March 8th Review. ‘Cluster Bomb at Morrison Judd’, in: Flash Art, Jan/Feb |