Biography
Clayton’s official art education began in 1997 when she began taking classes at Gage Academy of Art in Seattle. At that time, it was called The Academy of Realist Art and she was thrilled to finally take classes in representational portraiture taught by Juliette Aristides, Tony Ryder and others. “My academic education had been in medicine and after 20 years of practice as a family doctor (with some drawing on the side) I soaked up those hours working with my creative brain.”
Clayton also participated in workshops at the Cape Cod School of Art studying color theory and enrolled in multiple workshops at the Scottsdale Artist School with artists including Matt Smith, Kenn Backhaus, Michael Malm, and Ray Roberts. She studied more plein air painting with Russell Case in Sun Valley and Calvin Liang in Carmel. More portraits with Jeff Watts at his atelier in Encinitas supplemented my training. Meanwhile, she had begun to paint full time in 1999.
“Since 2008 I have been co-teaching an ongoing oil painting class with my friend Janice Kirstein (also a signature member of AIS) who is an outstanding colorist trained in the methods of the Russian Impressionist, Sergei Bongart, through his disciples Ron Lucas and Henry Stinson. Her influence on my understanding of color temperature has been profound.”
In 2014, Clayton started experimenting with the palette knife again and found that it nudged her to see bigger shapes, use cleaner and broken color, minimize strokes, be more intuitive and most of all stop and think before she applied a “knife-ful” of paint. “The special color effects that can be achieved by dragging layers of color over each other with the knife cannot be duplicated with a brush. The texture adds additional appeal when the work is seen ‘in person’ as opposed to viewing a digital image. As the lighting changes, so do the reflections off the strokes and the painting comes to life.”
She currently works with Howard Mandville Gallery in Woodinville, WA and Horizon Fine Art in Jackson, WY
EDUCATION: B.S., M.D. University of MI –Medicine
M.A. Stanford Univ. –Pharmacology
ART EDUCATION: Gage Academy of Art in Seattle plus many workshops
TEACHING: 2008- present –Intermediate/advanced Oil Painting- Seattle,
ongoing class. Workshops in Plein Air, Animal Portrait, Temperature of
Light, Painting with a palette knife
REPRESENTATION:
Horizon Fine Art, Jackson Hole, WY
Howard/Mandville Gallery, Woodinville, WA