In Letters to Mary Ward, Emilie Clark corresponds with Mary Ward (1827-1869), a 19th century Irish natural historian and painter who wrote three books and many articles that she frequently illustrated. The starting point for this project is Ward’s first book, A World of Wonders Revealed by the Microscope, that conveys Ward’s observations of nature through written descriptions and illustrations of plant and animal specimens that Ward had found and collected in Ireland. Emilie Clark interpreted the treatise as a personal letter and in response created two groups of watercolors, her own letters to Ward, which are exhibited along with an ongoing collection of her own specimens.

The first series of watercolors is based on each one of Ward’s written descriptions of life observed through the microscope. Loose, open-ended and transporting, these deft depictions convey the excitement of discovery and seeing shared by both women. For the second group Clark chose specimens from her own collection to draw, working directly from the object. These are not bound by the microscope, but filtered through the artist’s own point of view. She offers these drawings in exchange to Ward. While 19th century natural history collections have served as a departure point for many contemporary artists, few have attempted to make such a personal bridge, to place observation and shared wonder at the center of their enterprise.

This project was first shown last year in the Gallagher Gallery at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Ireland as part of Living in a Cloud. Clark has exhibited at the University of California, San Diego Athenaeum; MusArc (Museum of Architecture), Ferrara, Italy; Delizia Estense del Belriguardo, Voghiera, Italy; Traywick Gallery, Berkeley, CA; Catherine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, CA. She is a co-founder and editor of Shark, a journal of poetics and art writing, which published Letters to Mary Ward. She received a Pollock Krasner Foundation grant and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency.

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Untitled MW-#23B, 2003 watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 7.25” x 5.25"	Untitled MW-#21B, 2003 watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 7.25” x 5.25"	Untitled MW-#12, 2003 watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 22” x 15”	Untitled MW-#26, 2003 watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 22” x 15”