Following classical painting studies in Philadelphia and three seasons working in rural Maine, Clara established her permanent Hudson Valley workspace in 2017. Her daily painting begins at dawn with hand-stretching linen and grinding earth minerals before natural light strikes the easels.
Her canvases develop slowly across months of thin, layered washes, allowing organic surface textures, cedar scent, and ambient daylight to shape each composition without haste.
Three material commitments
Every physical element of the artwork is assembled by hand using archival, non-synthetic components chosen for durability and quiet sensory weight.
Belgian flax linen
Gathered mineral earth
Joinery cedar strainers
Unbleached, heavyweight linen woven by traditional European mills, sized with archival rabbit-skin glue to preserve raw woven texture under paint layers.
Pure raw ochres, slate ash, and iron oxides milled by hand on glass slabs with cold-pressed walnut oil for lightfast, velvety depth.
Kiln-dried aromatic cedar stretchers built in-house with mortise corners, ensuring dimensional stability and resistance to warping through changing seasons.
Vane rejects the clinical distance of modern gallery painting. Her surfaces carry the direct breath of raw earth, cedar sawdust, and patient human time.
Elena Mercer, Northeast Arts Quarterly
Inquiries regarding current available works, custom commission requests, and private studio visits are always received directly.