Christchurch born Russell Clark began taking art classes as a sixteen year old at the Canterbury College of Art and by the age of twenty was teaching there part time. Though he began exhibiting and receiving mural commissions almost immediately, he also needed regular income and turned to commercial art through the 1930s in a restless succession of jobs in Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington.

The Second World War seemed to offer even wider horizons for the confident young artist and so he offered his services as war artist to then Prime Minister, Peter Fraser in 1942 and subsequently served with the 3rd New Zealand Division in the Pacific. After his war service, he returned to Wellington and his career in advertising...