Biography of Classical Realist Painter Lonni Clarke

Lonni Clarke, inveterate animal lover and artist, grew up in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. As a young girl she thought of little else than schemes to acquire a horse, a huge impracticality in the suburbs, and how to draw horses better. She drew precociously, able to turn out quite a respectable portrait even while in grade school.

Her first trip to Europe at age twelve exposed her to the things that would become the great themes of her life – a love of classical arts and of history. If only her parents, notorious non-horse lovers, had hit a few great stud farms on the Grand Tour, the trip would have been truly complete.

Returning, Lonni immersed herself in European art history and refining the gift for capturing accurate likenesses. Later, as a teenaged tourist again in Europe, she looked at the paintings in the Louvre, imagined the process of their creation, and felt that its understanding was within her reach. She knew intuitively that she could paint the world around her if she but had a guide. However, the departure from traditional drawing and painting skills in 1970's college art departments initially discouraged her from pursuing art as a career. Instead Lonni earned a degree in Medieval and Early Modern History from UCLA and planned to attend law school. During her last quarter at UCLA, however, the right side of her brain finally won the wrestling match, and she abandoned her plans for law school. Within a year she was in New York, studying fashion design, earning a degree from New York's Fashion Institute of Technology.

Lonni worked briefly in the New York fashion industry, but was increasingly drawn to the creative freedom of fashion art rather than the more mechanical pattern-making aspects of fashion design. A gradual drift from fashion, to illustration, to fine art followed. Once she picked up a brush and oil paints, there was no turning back. She eventually acquired classical painting skills mostly unaided and largely self taught. She pored over books, haunted museums, and reinvented quite a number of wheels. A few beacons along the way were veteran illustrator Rex John Irvine, and Art Center College of Design's Dan Mc Caw, Larry Carroll, and the late, great Richard Bunkall. While attending night classes at Art Center, Lonni lived a short distance from Santa Anita Park, one of America's premiere race tracks. Santa Anita inspired her to begin paintings that old obsession of her childhood – horses.

A few years later Lonni moved to central and then southern Utah, where her subjects became more rural and pastoral than the elegant foxhunting, polo and horseracing that she depicted in California. Shaggy horses standing in fields, barns, and falling down sheds became de rigueur. A gifted figure painter and portraitist, she often paints horse people along with their horses in a classic, timeless manner. Lonni’s interest in history and classical art forms shows in her visual works, not being typically contemporary. Neither Lonni nor her paintings are quite living in this century!

Polo/Ralph Lauren owns more paintings by Lonni Clarke than any other collector. Lonni has produced works that hang in Mr. Lauren's office and flagship Polo/Ralph Lauren stores, most notably a monumental portrait of a polo player in the stairway of Beverly Hills store. Her works have been used by CBS as set dressings and one work has also been on the big screen in The Horse Whisperer.. She has painted portraits for many private patrons. Lonni Clarke is represented by the Two Sisters Fine Art Gallery in Heber City, Utah. Lonni lives with one surviving borzoi (Russian wolfhound) from the original pack shown below and an Australian cattle dog in St. George, Utah. After having given her last horse, Tilly the Hun, to a special boy, she is shopping for a nice thoroughbred mare. And another borzoi or a mastiff, if anyone cares to do a trade.... Lonni is an avid reader, gardener, and is passionate about Libertarian politics, the Constitution, and works for a revival of the principles of the Founding Fathers. Her heroes are Jesus Christ, Thomas Jefferson, and John Singer Sargent.

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This page was last updated on 2009. © Lonni Clarke, All Rights Reserved.