Printmaker, painter, sculptor, and poet Peter Edward Clarke was born on June 2, 1929, in coastal Simon's Town, Cape Town, South Africa. Raised in a working class family as racist apartheid laws became increasingly dominant, he left school to find employment on the local docks in 1944. Though he was interested in art, he was denied entry into formal art schools due to his mixed-race Black ethnicity, defined in Cape Town as "Coloured." Undeterred, he taught himself how to draw and paint, frequenting galleries and museums to study what was on display. 

In 1947 he was able to take night courses at St. Philip's School in Woodstock, which he then followed up with classes at Cape Technical College the following year. For the next decade he continued as a dockworker while also focusing diligently on his art, building a local reputation as both a visual artist and poet. In 1955 he published his first short story for which he won Drum Magazine's International Short Story Award. Drum was an unapologetically anti-apartheid publication, amplifying the voices of Coloured, Black, and Asian South Africans throughout the 1950s. This furthered Clarke's reputation. Encouraged, he quit his dockworker job to focus entirely on art and writing, and in 1957 he held his first solo art exhibition at the Golden City Post's newsroom. 

1961 proved a pivotal year for Clarke. He participated in his first major international show, the Sao Paulo Biennale, and was given a solo exhibition in Cape Town's District Six, designated a whites-only neighborhood. This show caught the attention of staff from the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Impressed, Clarke was allowed three months' free enrollement to study etching, but due to his status as Coloured he was not allowed formal entry. From there he traveled to the The Netherlands to study at Rijksakademie van Beeldenden in Amsterdam with less prejudicial restriction. He discovered German Expressionism, Mexican Modernists, and traditional Japanese printmaking, all of which remained inspirational to him throughout his career.

Throughout this time, South Africa's apartheid was gaining strength under the Group Areas Act, which, among other things, pushed non-white South Africans out of areas seen as desireable to parliament. In 1972 Clarke was forced out of his birthplace, Simon's Town, and into the now-overcrowded Ocean View township. Originally called Slangkop by Dutch settlers, it was ironically renamed by the new residents who were removed from their oceanside homes and into what would become one of the most economically depressed regions on the Cape.

This hardship lent fuel to Clarke's artistic output, and his work often took on themes not only of struggle and isolation, but the beauty found within these as well. By the late 1970s Clarke had exhibited throughout the globe including a solo exhibition in Chicago and group exhibitions in Yugoslavia, Germany, Australia, Austria, Italy, Nigeria, and more. However, when a global boycott of South Africa was launched to try to end apartheid, it also effectively stifled Black and Coloured artists' ability to find opportunity in the art world - an irony not lost on Clarke. In the hopes of finding a place to work without such restrictions, he applied to study and work at Atelier Nord in Oslo, but due to the boycott, he was denied entry for two years. He finally went to Norway to study and work in 1979.

Ultimately, Clarke chose not to move permanently out of Ocean View. To him, the inspiration and power of art lay in his life there. The stories he told through his prints and paintings were deeply rooted in the struggle and joy he felt and witnessed in Ocean View. He found it particularly important that the voices of non-white, non-colonial South African artists be heard globally. While many of his peers left for other, freer countries, Clarke not only remained in South Africa but in the town to which he was forced to move. In doing so, his ouvre remained a direct link to a place that might have otherwise flown under the radar.

In the later half of his career, Clarke added bookmaking and collage to his repertoire, and he continued to publish written works for which he earned as many accolades as his visual art. Among the twenty-seven international honors he was awarded throughout his career were the Order of Ikhamanga (Silver) by President Thabo Mbeki (2005); Elected Honorary Doctor of Literature, World Academy of Arts and Culture, Taipei, Taiwan (1984); Honorary Like Member of the Museum of African American Art, Los Angeles, CA (1983); Diploma of Merit in Art, Academia Italia (1983); Diploma of Merit in Literature, Universita delle Arti, Italy (1982); Elected Honorary Fellow in Writing, University of Iowa (1975); and Accademico Onorario, Accademia delle Arti del Disegnia, Florence, Italy (1965). 

Peter Edward Clarke died in Ocean View, Cape Town, South Africa on April 13, 2014. His artwork is held in public and private collections throughout the world, and in 2016 the Peter Clarke Art Centre was opened in Cape Town.