Long before his death in New Mexico on 2 February 2011 at age 88, Clark Hulings – without ever seeking fame or the limelight – had long been acclaimed as one of America’s finest artists. Often described as a realist painter, his canvases have a timeless quality like an indelible memory, treasured and fixed in the mind’s eye. What might have remained no more than solid commercial craftsmanship was – through tremendous dedication and diligence, as well as a questing spirit – instead transformed into something sublime.
He was born in Florida on 20 November 1922 to Courtland M. Hulings and Anner (Anne) Weed Everett. Both his parents received their postsecondary education in Potsdam, New York, his father a graduate of the Clarkson College of Engineering and his mother of the Crane Normal Institute of Music (soprano Renée Fleming is among their most famous alumni).