Soft Light
Martina Clarke
- Sitter: Conor Knight
- Medium: Oil on Board
- Dimensions: 18cm x 13cm
- Representation: This artist represents themselves
- Categories: Female artist
About the artwork
Conor Knight is a self-taught Brisbane painter who works primarily from life, a deep thinker with a contemplative and analytical mind. He is also artist Martina Clarke’s partner. The two painters share a studio life, and with it the particular intimacy of two people who see the world through the same eyes.
One morning, lying in bed in a sunbeam, Knight fell into the kind of unhurried conversation about art and portraiture that only happens in private. Completely comfortable and entirely himself, Clarke captured this intimate and dreamy moment. “He is quite an introspective person,” Clarke says. “He spends a lot of time thinking about painting.” The looseness and ease of this small study captured the moment perfectly, a rare and intimate glimpse into a private world.
About the artist
Martina Clarke is a Brisbane-based representational oil painter, born in Sydney in 1997. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT University in 2020. Her accolades include winning the Lethbridge 20,000 Small-Scale Art Award in August 2026, as well as the 2021 Brisbane Portrait Prize Emerging Artist Award, 2021 the Artists Circle Grant and the 2022 People’s Choice Award. Her practice centres on intimacy, domestic space and personal experience. She presented her first solo exhibition at Land Street Gallery in 2023, followed by the duo exhibition SYZYGY at Metro Arts in 2025.
