LISTENING TO DISTANT THUNDER. THE ART OF PETER CLARKE (Signed by artist)

First Edition: 221 pages including bibliography and index, profusely illustrated in colour throughout, original laminated pictorial paper covered boards, a fine copy, signed by Peter Clarke on the title page, dated May 2011.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Clarke_(artist)#Early_life) 'Clarke was born in Simon's Town near Cape Town, in 1929. Much of his work is inspired by that coastal village where he lived until 1972, when he was forced to move to Ocean View under the Group Areas Act. He left high school in 1944 and was a dock worker until 1956 when, aged 27, during a three-month holiday to Tesselaarsdal, a small farming village near Caledon in the South West Cape, he began his artistic career.

'With assistance from his lifelong friend, poet James Matthews, Clarke held his first solo exhibition in the newsroom of the newspaper The Golden City Post in 1957. He said, "Before my exhibition, I was just another coloured man. Our people took it for granted that only whites could do such things. Now they are becoming aware of the fact that we can do these things too; that we are human beings!'

Publisher's note: "Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke recounts an artist’s life in the context of the social history of South Africa from the 1940s onwards. His images reflect the social disruption of the Cape Flats, and the trauma of his community’s forced removal from Simon’s Town to the bleak apartheid township of Ocean View. Yet Clarke’s images have avoided bitterness, and his work is a perceptive scrutiny and celebration of life in all its aspects. Illustrated with over 200 reproductions and photographs, this book was researched and written by well-known South African art historians Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin, in close collaboration with the artist over almost seven years.'

The phrase "Listening to Distant Thunder" is the title of a specific 1970 painting by Clarke (page 116). It depicts a woman and children in a landscape that feels heavy with an approaching storm — a metaphor for the contemporary political tensions in South African society.

Standard Bank published this first edition to coincide with the Peter Clarke retrospective exhibition held at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg in 2011. Only 500 copies were printed and they sold out during the course of the exhibition. After Clarke's death in 2014 a second edition was published by Fernwood Press in a slightly smaller format.