Captivated at once by the landscape and architecture of northern New Mexico, Donna Clair has been painting the area surrounded by Santa Fe, Taos and the high mountain village of Truchas for nearly forty years.

Clair was born and raised in Chicago and educated at the University of Illinois, the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1967 she moved to Santa Fe as the single mother of a two-year old son and 6-month old twin daughters. She worked full time as a legal secretary, but supplemented her income by teaching painting workshops and selling her artwork. Motivated by financial necessity, Clair was producing an extraordinary number of paintings each year, and through this discipline she became an enormously skilled painter.

Over time Clair’s painting changed drastically as she developed the style by which her work is now immediately recognizable. Inspired by countless childhood hours of embroidery, her experience using pastels and the French pointillist style, she uses pure, rich colors which she applies individually in strokes which are blended in the viewer’s eye and not on the canvas. She works wet on wet in numerous layers made more vibrant by her underpainting. Her technique lends a sense of movement to her works which compliments and balances the solidity of her imagery.

Donna Clair’s work has been featured in a number of books and periodicals including Leading the West, Art of the American West, and Southwest Art Magazine. She has lived in Taos, NM for the past 18 years.

( click here to read an article about Donna Clair)

link to images: http://www.mclarryfineart.com/donnaclair.html