Todd Clark Studio

There are days when you go looking for something to hang on a wall and come home with something that changes the room. This was one of those days.

I had heard about Todd Clark the way you hear about most things on the Sunshine Coast — sideways, through someone who knew someone. A friend mentioned a studio tucked into the woods near Gospel Rock, on the edge of Gibsons where the town gives way to five acres of orchard and horse paddock and the kind of quiet that makes you forget the ferry exists. I drove out on a Tuesday with no particular plan. I left with a painting.

Todd Clark is, by any measure, one of the most significant painters working in British Columbia today. That is not hyperbole — it is the considered opinion of six galleries across the country, from Benz Gallery in London (Ontario) to Canvas Gallery in Toronto, Art Junction in Whistler, Art Works in Vancouver, Gallery Merrick in Victoria, and Aion Gallery in Burnaby. His work sells in the $1,800 to $4,000 USD range for large-scale oils, and it sells consistently. When a piece goes up at Saatchi Art — where he has over 559 works listed and more than 1,100 followers — it moves.

And yet, the best place to encounter Todd Clark's work is not a gallery. It is here, in the studio he built himself — beam by beam, with what he cheerfully describes as a contraption of ramps and five men and a near-death experience — on a property he and his wife Carol Marlowe fell in love with the first afternoon they saw it.

The Work Itself

Todd's paintings are large. Not large in the way that intimidates — large in the way that commands. Most of his canvases run 48 to 54 inches on a side, and they fill a wall the way a window fills a wall: with light, with movement, with the suggestion of something just beyond the frame. The medium is oil, applied with a physicality that is immediately apparent up close. You can see the decisions — the drag of a palette knife, the flick of a loaded brush, the moment he chose to stop.

He describes his process as a visual dance with no predetermined choreography. That is not an affectation. Standing in the studio, watching him talk about a canvas in progress, you understand that he genuinely does not know where a painting is going when he starts. He responds to what is there. He follows the paint. The result is work that feels simultaneously inevitable and surprising — as though the painting always existed and he simply found it.

This is precisely what makes his work so compelling for a home. A Todd Clark painting does not explain itself. It does not demand a particular reading. It lives differently in morning light than in evening light. It changes with the season, with your mood, with who is standing in front of it. Collectors report noticing new things in the same painting years after they bought it. That is not a small thing. That is the whole thing.

The Studio Visit

The studio building is a two-storey structure on the Gospel Rock property — rebuilt from the foundation up after the original structure proved too far out of code to save. Todd and Carol used large fir beams to echo the main house, and the result is a space that feels both serious and warm. Paintings lean against every wall. The smell of linseed oil and turpentine is present but not overwhelming. Natural light comes in from the north.

Todd is generous with his time and his thinking. He will talk you through a painting in progress, explain why he made a particular decision, tell you about the ones that didn't work. There is no sales pressure. He is not performing for you. He is simply a person who loves to paint, living on a farm with horses and dogs and chickens and the occasional bear, making work that ends up in homes and galleries across the country.

Carol's world runs alongside his — she rescues retired racetrack thoroughbreds and competes them in eventing. The property has a quality of purposeful life to it. Everyone and everything here is doing something they are genuinely suited for. It is, in the best possible sense, a working place.

The studio interior · Gospel Rock, Gibsons

Commissions are welcomed and handled with the same directness as everything else here. Todd will work with you on scale, palette, and mood — but he will not paint to a brief that removes his freedom. The paintings that result from a commission are still unmistakably his. That is the point.

Where to Find His Work

Works are also available through Saatchi Art (559+ listings) and directly from the studio in Gibsons by appointment. Prices for large-scale oils (48–54 inches) typically range from $1,800 to $4,000 USD. Smaller works and commissions are available at varying price points.

I drove back from Gospel Rock with the painting wrapped in the back seat, and I kept checking the rearview mirror. Not because I was worried about it. Because I wanted to see it again.

That is what a Todd Clark painting does. It makes you want to look at it. Again, and again, and differently each time. There are not many things in this world that do that. When you find one, you bring it home.

Best Day Ever. Without question.