Claire Brooker’s enduring fascination for gardens and natural landscapes underpins her explorations of perception and immersion in relation to specific locations. Her work involves the development of evocative images of flora and vegetation using a variety of processes and media, including photography, printmaking and painting on paper, canvas and wooden panel.

Claire’s work consciously explores different modes of looking and seeing, whether registering the focused minutiae of interlacing plant growth, the roving views of boundless space, or the drift of garden borders. Informed by the formal qualities of the photographic process, as well as the impressionistic effects of digital layering and randomised capture, she sensitively interprets her subjects, concerned with depicting different intensities of imagery, both blurred and sharp, suggestive of stillness and motion.  Moving between printed and painted mediums – at times a complex layering of both – she combines subtly blended tones and clearly defined applications of colour, articulating them through intuitive mark-making and textural surface treatments. Her process also involves the strategic application and repeated removal of pigment from surfaces, often resulting in ambiguous levels of ‘finish’ that express the unique characteristics of her subject.

Claire Brooker (b. 1972) received a Batchelor of Arts in Textile Design from Manchester School of Art in 1994. With an eye for detail and skills honed in working with colours, surface treatments and spatial organisation, she has worked professionally within a broad range of creative sectors including art & design education and interior design consultancy. In 2023 she embarked upon a two year Master of Fine Art programme at West Dean College, Sussex with the intention of exploring a more personal and artistic connection to her favourite source of inspiration: the natural forms of flora and foliage.

DESIGN DIRECTION

Claire continues to work collaboratively with architects, designers, artists and makers using her creativity and intuition to develop styling concepts and original designs that achieve character, warmth, harmony and balance.  To date the series of commissions undertaken includes solutions for residential properties, commercial interiors and public environments.