A rich life jampacked with success
He ran, he created art, he lived life to the fullest. Flynn MorrisClarke packed a lot into his 35 years, most of which were spent in Dunedin, before he died in Motueka from brain cancer on June 25. His family shares his story.
Flynn the runner
When Flynn started school at the age of 5, his interest in sport soon become apparent. He liked to have a crack at just about everything — rugby, cricket, basketball, skiing — and would work relentlessly to become skilled at it.
However, when it came to distance running he was an absolute natural.
What appeared to be an ungainly and awkward technique slowly developed into a thing of grace and beauty. As countless photographs over many years show, Flynn didn’t really run as much as he ‘‘flew’’. His stride was massive, and training runs along the beach would leave foot marks in the sand that were impossible for those following to duplicate.
When he turned 10, he and his sister joined the Ariki club and each Saturday through the summer the family could be found hanging around the Caledonian Ground, watching and helping out as required.
As Flynn’s technique and experience improved, records started flying and 20odd years later, his name is still in several record books.
Summer holidays were usually organised around North and South Island Colgate Games, where the very best young New Zealand athletes would annually gather to compete. Flynn would always come home with a fistful of medals and even more enthusiastic.
It was around this time that Flynn became involved with his only coach, the late Ali McMurran. Ali was the original Lydiard disciple and had coached some great champions, including Dick Tayler. He was convinced if Flynn was patient and worked hard, he could have a stellar running career.
Flynn was 12 when he was selected to represent New Zealand for the first time, at the 1997 Pacific School Games in Sydney. National selection followed at regular intervals.
He ended his running days at Otago Boys’ High School by winning the 2003 New Zealand secondary schools 1500m on a ruthlessly cold and windy Invercargill day, by a margin almost the entire length of the home straight.
Flynn was offered a running scholarship at a leading college in the United States, but right from the start McMurran had made it clear all the hard work and preparation was not about winning races as a junior. That would undoubtedly happen, but the goal was putting Flynn in a position to be competitive at the highest level.
By the time Flynn was 20, he was training up to three times a day, six to seven hours, six days a week. The impact on one’s body and social life is brutal, and without singleminded determination and a total passion for it, success is just not going to happen.
Many people have asked why, after so much dedication and sacrifice, Flynn just stopped running.
Flynn was intelligent, pragmatic and now old enough to realise that, at the highest level, the playing field was not always level. Drugenhanced performances in endurance sports were rife and he was no longer convinced that, in big races, he could look his fellow competitors in the eye and be confident they were running clean.
Rather than become bitter about it, Flynn decided to do other things. All the discipline, enthusiasm, passion and dedication he had developed throughout his running career would soon be put to good use in a life as an artist and working painter.
Flynn the artist
Flynn grew up in a family home surrounded by art, and music filled the air. He loved to draw in a whimsical way but those early attempts of selfexpression had something very suggestive about them.
When he was 11, he went with father Scott to the visiting Guggenheim exhibition at the new Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
‘‘As I started to explain the artist’s motivation and purpose of a particular painting, Flynn’s intense and sustained interest was astonishing,’’ Scott recalled.
‘‘No questions, just silent wonder, but you could see his mind working furiously, sucking everything in. I lost count of how many times we went back.’’
Flynn developed into a young man who was contemplative on all aspects of life. He had honed his intelligence and understood how to use it with wellconsidered wisdom.
After school, he gained a BA in art history from the University of Otago. He progressed to the Dunedin School of Art to complete a postgraduate diploma in painting, and added honours (fine arts) and masters (visual arts) degrees.
Over the years, he experimented with various genres but it was his portraiture for which he became most well known.
His departure point would often come from found cinematic sources, but not always. He had the ability to condense an entire movie into a single image, inviting the viewer to fill in the detail according to their own life experience or imagination.
His oil painting technique required a very high level of skill and great patience. He would build the image up using a series of different coloured translucent layers, each of them requiring time to dry. . For practicality, he would often have three or four works on the go at any one time and most works would take many weeks to complete.
To supplement this process, he would work with pastels or charcoal on paper, which could be worked reasonably quickly and thus be less expensive to produce.
Typical of any working painter, he had many different jobs to sustain his art. He hated to be drawn away from his studio and easel but he considered it an essential part of his work.
Flynn leaves a wonderful legacy. His work hangs in private and public collections all around the world.
Flynn the man
Flynn was born in Dunedin on June 19, 1985, to Scott Clarke and Barbara Morris. A sister, Greer, would follow.
School — he attended Macandrew Bay and Tahuna Intermediate before going to Otago Boys’ — was a tricky place for him. He was, his family, say, ‘‘so brazenly out there. Being a tad bizarre and with plenty to say about pretty much everything, his peers didn’t really quite know how to take him.’’
Flynn enjoyed skiing and through opportunity became very good at it. During the 1980s and ’90s, his parents ran ski trips as part of their tourist operations and Flynn was on the bus whenever there was a spare seat.
As soon as they were old enough, both he and his sister joined the Otago Ski Club and would spend most of the August school holidays slipsliding around Coronet Peak.
Flynn was intelligent and wellread with a very inquisitive mind. He wore his heart on his sleeve and had a wonderful sense of humour, a strong love and attachment to family, and a very strong sense of loyalty and honour.
Family members describe him as a ‘‘oneoff, multigifted, a totally unique individual, who never failed to surprise.’’
His varied work experience included spells as a vineyard worker, car detailer, labourer, art tutor, dishwasher, waiter, wine taster, barman, barista, truck driver, wildlife guide, ski instructor, DJ, radio music show host, film extra, videographer and film editor.
Flynn had a very tolerant philosophy on life and the rights of others. He was a fundamental democratic socialist, a Labour voter and a great fan of Bernie Sanders.
Being a typical artist, he considered it his job to observe and comment on what he observed. He was antiracist and antisexist, and nonreligious, while still believing in the rights of others to follow whatever religious philosophy they were drawn to, as long as it did not impede the rights of others to the same freedoms of choice.
Flynn was a very passionate man with a great empathy for the fate of others. He had a unique way of looking at life, was generous beyond prudence and always socialised without prejudice.
He was diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, a rare form of brain cancer with less than 5% of cases surviving five years, in January 2018. It was well advanced and he was given just three months to live.
The family geared up for battle at their holiday home in Motueka, and Flynn’s Irish partner, Mary, took a position as a doctor at Nelson Hospital.
Flynn responded well to various treatments and months turned into a year.
After a scan showed his brain tumour had reduced significantly, he and father
Scott went on a European holiday, sniffing out every decent art gallery they could find.
Before lockdown this year, Flynn’s health deteriorated, and while his partner was stuck back in Ireland, his family was with him when he died on June 25.
Flynn ‘‘met his maker’’ with a smile, total dignity, unwavering courage, and no complaints, his father said.
Flynn is survived by his partner, Dr Mary Keenan, parents Scott Clarke and Barbara Morris, sister Greer, brotherinlaw Harry and niece Zadie Flynn Wright.