Understands the artist quit using grass in April (6)
I believe the answer is:
grasps
'understands' is the definition.
(grasping is a kind of understanding)
'artist quit using grass in april' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'artist' could be 'ra' (Royal Academician, member of Royal Academy of Arts) and 'ra' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
'the' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for grasps that I've seen before include "Clutches" , "Takes hold of firmly" , "holds" , "Understands" , "Gets hold of" .)