Abstract Artist: Stephen St.Claire
Medium: Oil, Metal Leaf, Epoxy
Website:  www.stclaireart.com

What fuels my creativity is the beauty I see in naturally occurring patterns and textures. The juxtaposition of simple randomness with complex order: that is what I see everywhere in nature. So when I paint, I am trying to express something of how I see life in general: deep…complicated…sometimes confusing and wild; even frenetic. But according to my faith tradition, there is a great God behind all this, giving beauty and order and Life. And so I try to celebrate the wild and random because that is what makes life fun and interesting but I always combine complete random patterns and textures with a background grid of gold, providing a sense of structure and order.

Stephen St.Claire was born and raised in Southern California, graduating from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since childhood, he was interested in painting landscapes, but more recently, a good deal of his time painting has been spent experimenting with textures, layers and symbols, all on various types of metal leaf. While experimenting, he found he could sandwich layers of paint and metal leaf between several layers of two-part epoxy and a style he calls Transparent Stratal Expressionism was born. The result is something rich, dimensional and highly reflective. That reflectivity allows light to affect the color differently depending upon where the viewer is standing in relation to the source of light.