Stephen St. Claire

Artist Statement

“I grew up painting mostly landscapes and still life, but somewhere around 2001, I began experimenting with painting on metallic leaf, and a new painting genre was born. This technique is called Dialuminism (”light passing through”) and embeds metallic leaf and multiple thin layers of oil paint within a coating of solar resistant resin. Because I am painting on a metallic surface, light reflects off the metal and illuminates the paint layers from the back. This makes for very intense color. Light plays off some areas and casts shadows beneath others, creating a dimensional painting that changes in appearance depending upon where the viewer is standing in relation to the light source.  

I began using this technique painting mostly abstract pieces but over the years, as the technique has morphed, I began painting more "abstracted landscape" scenes which led eventually to the more realistic landscape scenes I work on today. My “go to” subject matter tends to be either generic scenes or scenes depicting different times of day and different locales from the general Western North Carolina mountains. That said, most of the commissions I work on depict scenes given to me by my clients, and these have ranged from the canals of Venice, Queensland harbor in New Zealand and even the glaciers of Antarctica! For a commission, “the sky’s the limit” as they say.  

St.Claire Art is a working studio with locations in Asheville, North Carolina and Dallas, Texas.

The Asheville studio is located at 344 Depot Street, #104 (in the Pink Dog Creative building) in the heart of Asheville, North Carolina's historic River Arts District. The studio is open from 10:00 - 5:00 six days a week (closed Sundays). If you visit Asheville, please make plans to drop by!

Our Dallas, Texas studio is open by appointment.