My Father Was Big as a Tree

Like many of the artist’s pictures, the painting draws upon personal stories and family photographs. It shows a dour-faced Cloar, sitting in his toy car, while towering over him—as tall as the tree in the background—is his father. Speaking of the painting years later, the artist recalled, that his father was “ … a big man, and I couldn’t help wondering as a boy if he wasn’t as big as a tree. Actually, I thought he was a little too big, and I didn’t quite approve of him.”

Cloar’s father appears in paintings throughout the artist’s career. One of the most poignant of these is Alien Child (1985) which hangs adjacent. This shows the artist as a child separated from his family by a chasm.