Brian Clarke / Linda McCartney exhibition at Musée Suisse du Vitrail

Between 1994 and 1998, Brian Clarke and Linda McCartney created three series of stained glass artworks that seamlessly blended mouth-blown glass and black and white photography. These works — primarily conceived as standalone pieces — were the result of an innovative process the two artists developed themselves, in which Linda’s photographs were silkscreened onto hand-crafted glass.

The first of these series began with a small set of leaded panels, gifted to and installed at the Hammersmith Hospital Cancer Centre in London. This was followed by two pairs of stained glass windows created for the Rye Memorial Hospital and Care Centre in West Sussex.

Their artistic partnership was celebrated in the 1997 book “Collaborations.”

That same year, their joint creations were exhibited at the Vitromusée Romont — the Swiss National Museum of Stained Glass — marking one of Linda’s final public artistic endeavors before her passing in 1998.

A posthumous exhibition followed at the Deutsches Glasmalerei-Museum in Linnich, Germany.

Though never published, a final series of works was completed in 1999.

Occasionally Linda McCartney and I did little groups of these collaboration panels for actual places: there was a cottage hospital in Rye in East Sussex close to where we lived, and we made a group of ten of one of her black and white photographs of a leaf, screenprinted onto stained glass and repeated, like an Andy Warhol, which we jointly gifted, together with another set of a swan. Once it’s repeated decoratively like that, the leaf has a vitality to it that it doesn’t as a single image. These leaves had perfectly formed holes – you know how leaves, when they fall, can sometimes decay? I don’t know if they’d been eaten out by a caterpillar or if it’s just nature, but I love the way it renders with these bits missing from it. Highlighting spots of water fallen around it as blue somehow gave it a cartoony, kind of Walt Disney feel to it that I enjoyed. And we did another series for the cancer ward at Hammersmith Hospital, and put one panel over each bed, just to cheer people up a bit. They’re still there I think. They made that ward just a little bit warmer, added an optimistic sparkle to a place that’s generally pretty demanding to be in.

Brian Clarke – 2020 – From Brian Clarke and Linda McCartney: Collaborations, 1994–1999 | Brian Clarke: architectural artist

Linda McCartney, working with her friend, the artist Brian Clarke, is helping to spearhead a revival of an art form that has been dormant for more than 100 years – stained-glass photography. They have been secretly working for three years on reviving the technique, which was last in vogue in the 1880s, and which Clarke has experimented with once before. They have now produced a number of stained glass photographs, including a set of portraits of Sir Paul McCartney as well as other celebrities, friends, flowers and urban landscapes. Through a new process that they have invented, Linda McCartney’s photographs are silk-screened on to mouth-blown glass. Instead of using inks, the colour comes from using ground glass mixed with iron oxide that is then fired in a kiln at 1,200C. The surface of the glass melts, the ground glass in the pigment melts and the two fuse. The pair kept the project secret for three years, says Clarke, “as we did not want what is a very difficult technique to be plagiarised before the opening of the Romont exhibition. All the techniques we that we have used are known techniques, but nobody has ever put them together like this before.” Linda McCartney said yesterday: “Having enjoyed collaborating with Brian for many years on various projects, I’m very excited about this opportunity to show our latest work. As a photographer, the possibilities of this form intrigue me.“

From The Independent – February 1998 – Taken from Brian Clarke and Linda McCartney: Collaborations | Brian Clarke

Going further

The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After The Break-Up 1970-2001

An updated edition of the best-seller. The story of what happened to the band members, their families and friends after the 1970 break-up is brought right up to date. A fascinating and meticulous piece of Beatles scholarship.

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