oil on masonite – ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

The Artwork of Tomas Clayton

Born in 1957 in Birmingham, Tomas Clayton is an English portrait painter who specializes in oils on masonite works. After his parents’ divorce early in his life, the absence of a father figure had an impact on his life that still to some extent permeates the subject and mood of his work. In the late 1960s, Clayton’s mother remarried and the family moved to Hereford where Clayton was awarded a three year Art Foundation Course at the Hereford Art College.

Clayton returned to Birmingham where he studied graphic design and illustration at the Ruskin Hall College of Art. After leaving college, he worked as a graphic designer and animator for the British Broadcasting Company and Central Independent Television, now known as ITV Central. Several years later, Clayton became a successful freelance graphic designer and illustrator for several corporations.

In the late 1970s, Tomas Clayton discovered a cache of vintage photographs that included formal portraits and images of family gatherings taken in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The presence of all the lost personalities, dressed in their stiff collars and corsets, made a strong impression on the style of Clayton’s later work. Other influences were the many painters and illustrators who had captured his imagination in the early 1970s. Among these were Scottish illustrator and painter Wilson McLean, American illustrator Brad Holland, French illustrator Jean Giraud also known as Moebius, and American graphic artist Paul Davis, a Hall of Fame member of the Society of Illustrators.

Clayton’s portraits have a very distinctive style that is carefully created with great attention to detail. Inspired by the nostalgic portraits and artifacts of the First World War era, he creates highly stylized images of actors and soldiers, as well as average men and women, that blend elements of that period with contemporary imagery. The surface areas of Clayton’s portraits are textural and display a surrealistic effect through his use of monochromatic tones. While the face is central to any portrait, the eyes of Clayton’s subjects become, in many of his works, the major focus. Dates written in Roman numerals occasionally are included in his images..

From 2007 to 2023, Tomas Clayton has shown his work in many group exhibitions including regular presentations at the Royal Portrait Society, New English Art Club and Mall Galleries at Saint James, London. In 2016, Clayton won the Columbia Threadneedle Prize for both his “Après la Guerre (After the War)” and “Chère Capucine (Dear Capucine)”, a portrait of a young man playing his resonator at a Parisian night club.

Tomas Clayton is represented by The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery Eton located upstairs at The Piper Art Bar building in Windsor, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Clayton’s work can be found at: https://www.cfag.co.uk/exhibition_thumbs.php?exhibition_id=319&show_rand=0&show_biog=1

Tomas Clayton’s website, which contains contact information for commissioned work, is located at: https://www.tomasclayton.co.uk

Top Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “Her Name Was Magill”, Oil on Masonite, 67 x 85.1 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “Blue-eyed Boy”, 2012, Oil on Masonite, 81 x 90.1 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Tomas Clayton, “The Serpent”, Oil on Masonite, 65 x 65 cm, Private Collection

Lois Dodd, “White Catastrophe”, Oil on Masonite, 1980, Private Collection

Lois Dodd was educated at the Cooper Union in New York City from 1945–48. She was the only woman founder of the Tanager Gallery, which was integral to the Tenth Street-avant-garde scene of the 1950s where artists began running their own coop galleries. From 1971 to 1992, Dodd taught at Brooklyn College and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where she served on the Board beginning in 1980 and is now Governor Emerita.

As part of the wave of New York modernists to explore the coast of Maine just after the end of the second world war, Dodd helped to change the face of painting in the state. Along with Fairfield Porter, Rackstraw Downes, Alex Katz, and Neil Welliver, Dodd began spending her summers in the Mid-Coast region surrounding Penobscot Bay. Attracted by inexpensive but rambling old farmhouses, verdant fields, and the bright sunshine of a summer’s day, these artists sought both companionship and an escape from the demands of city life.