Claire Hees

 

Claire Hees is an artist of the richness of life—the indelible images that make our existence large and memorable—people caught in moments that tell us more about them than we ever thought we could know, and places and objects like cellared wine barrels that evoke not only the daily pleasures of the grape but the history and transformative skills of the vintner.  Claire’s artistry is as much in recognizing moments and images as it is in rendering them.

 

Claire was raised in the artistically rich cities of Houston and Fort Worth, Texas and has been heavily influenced by that exposure, as well as by the extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity of Houston, where each day introduced a new way of seeing the world around us.               

 

Encouraged by an artistic family, Claire works in numerous media, including charcoal, watercolors and gelatin film, but she finds her greatest artistic inspiration in the bold strokes and brilliant color choices of Wayne Thiebaud, David Bates, Van Gogh and Cezanne, and so her first love is oil painting.  She produces both large and small canvases of the images that capture her eye and interest, as well as portraits and subjects commissioned by clients and rendered in her unique style.  She is a fresh young artist on the Austin scene, having graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Studio Art in 2007, but already she is establishing her own bright, modern, descriptive vision as a resident artist at Austin Art Space Gallery and Studio.