Clarke first exhibited with the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1913,[3] and would go on to exhibit over 60 artworks in the forty years until 1953, the majority being portraits.[8] Amongst the portrait commissions Clarke received were ones for Dermod O'Brien, President Éamon de Valera, Archbishop McQuaid, and Lennox Robinson.[8][9] Clarke spent a great deal of time on the Aran Islands with fellow artist Seán Keating and her husband,[9] from which she produced a number of landscapes and smaller studies.[9]