RUSSIA

His experiences of churches in Russia left a profound spiritual impression.

"The churches are packed with young people but especially the old and you realise that you're seeing people who have actually lived through Stalin's purges - including the 900 day siege of Leningrad when one million people died - and still kept their faith!"

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 (1)  Believers, Leningrad

 (2)  Lifelong Devotion
This represents the intensity of the belief of the Russian people expressed in their churches, enriched with icons, candles and incense - an atmosphere whose power the artist also finds revealed by the great Russian novelists Pasternak and Tolstoy.

 (3) Believers, Moscow

 (4)  Cathedral of the Assumption, Moscow

Just as Monet kept returning obsessively in pursuit of every possible impression of Rouen cathedral, so Clark comes back again and again to the Cathedral of the Assumption - finding it a source of meditative inspiration.

(5) Burning Belief
The title has two references: to the burning down of churches in an attempt to stifle Christianity, but much more powerfully, to the inextinguishable impression of human belief seen in the timeless, ritual gestures of candles and prayers.

(6) Icons in a Peasant's House
This is dominated by the intensity of glowing icons in the dark candle-lit room.