Masked Girl ,1977
Literature : Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. (2011) Listening to Distant Thunder, The Art of Peter Clarke, Johannesburg: Standard Bank of South Africa. Pages 149 and 157. Illustrated in colour on page 149.
Soon after returning home from the USA in 1977, Clarke created Masked girl, a two-colour relief print, cut on a piece of found wood. Masks had appeared earlier in Clarke's work, carrying diverse personal meanings, from masquerading at Guy Fawkes through to more psychological implications (Miles 2000: 68-9). The idea for the image in this print might also have been prompted by the fact that Peter had seen the Engles's Iowa collection of masks from all over the world. In discussing Masked girl, Clarke ventures that 'What you see is not what you get', and remarks that it is not necessary to wear an actual mask to hide your feelings. He comments that he is one of those people whose role it is to listen to others who share confidences and then say 'it's only between the two of us - don't tell anybody'. In a society of suppression and concealment - one in which the future disclosures of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings could not yet have been imagined - maintaining silence behind an expressionless face was an effective way of hiding a mind filled with secret knowledge.....
