Commissions
Every year Clova carries out several commissions and will consider proposals of any size, in most media.
These might include the following: gouache, oil, distemper, pen and ink, pencil and mixed media.
Due to the range of her work, she is able to tackle most genres whether Still life, Gardens or Architecture.
Recently she has had the satisfaction of being re-commissioned by clients to carry out new works on similar themes to the original briefs -the oil of hyacinths in their glowing glass vases and Morisot-esque bedroom interior further down the page were carried out last year.
“I was so moved by what you have created - a picture of extraordinary vibrancy and depth, but also paying homage to the integrity of the pots...”
Often commissions are seasonally related -
Magnolias in flower beyond a sitting room window
A still life with old roses, columbine and ceramic vessels
A garden vista with the lavender at its peak
Wisteria in a walled garden or a window sill with a row of hyacinths
Clova always works from life – and, if it is not possible to do a large piece of work in situ, she works from drawings and colour studies.
“The painter of my pots does well! It is normal for painters not to be able to show pots in their work. Somehow they can very seldom catch the 3D element and miss the nature of the pot. These are good!”
Or can represent buildings and interiors of particular significance -
Whether the private space of a teenager's bedroom
The Modernist buildings of an Oxford college or -
The architecture and gardens of a Victorian public school.
Teaching
Teaching has always and continues to be a valued and much enjoyed element of Clova's career. On completing her Postgraduate studies at the Royal Academy she did a specialist Art Teaching qualification at Goldsmiths' College. Since then she has balanced a portfolio of teaching with her painting practice. After teaching Art and Art History at St Paul's School, Barnes and Radley College; she then diversified into the teaching of adults at Sunningwell School of Art. After returning to part-time Secondary Teaching in the dynamic and adventurous Art Department at OLASS in Oxfordshire for an enjoyable fourteen years she then returned to teach at Sunningwell until 2023. http://artschool.org.uk.
She is also a Short Course Tutor at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University where she currently teaches Life Drawing. In addition, she has taught some unusual Summer Courses relating to the still life, notably ‘Deconstructing Cubism’.
A ‘short course’ highlight was teaching a version of the Cubism course to a large group of BA and MA Fine Art students from China at St Anthony’s College, organised by the Oxford Global Prospects Development Centre.
Clova has been invited to help set up a new initiative - The John Ruskin Project at The Ashmolean which, it is hoped, will commence in the next academic year. Leading on from her regular life drawing teaching at The Ruskin School of Art, with the artists Roger Wagner and Francis Hamel, the scheme will enable students at the university who do not study Fine Art to experience a different way of thinking and processing visual information through drawing from a life model. Classes will be taught in the inspiring surroundings of The Cast Gallery and there will be sessions discussing relevant drawings from the collections in the Print Room. The project will reflect the ideas behind Ruskin’s original art school in the Ashmolean.