Dear Debra Clemente,

I am a student of the Sothern Regional College, Armagh campus in Northern Ireland completing my two-year course in A level Art.  Whilst browsing on the Internet I came across your unique and stunning artwork.  The reason why for my e-mail is that, within my art unit, I am required to incorporate and review different artists and their thoughts whose work I find appeals to me. 

Having said this, I would really appreciate if you could give me just a few minutes of your time to answer just a couple of questions on your art work? Thank you.

Yours Sincerely
Rebecca Lowry

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Dear Debra Clemente,

I am absolutely thrilled at your reply.  Within my art course, I am required to write as dissertation, which is basically an essay that would base on you as my chosen artist and with these questions that I ask you, I will use to fulfill my assignment.
I would like to add that you don’t have to answer them all if you don’t want to, answer as many as you can. 

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When did you start painting?

I came out of the womb a creative child. My mother tells me I would set aside coloring books and ask for plain white paper to draw on. At 6 I did my first large-scale artwork. I drew a mural on our garage door, without permission of course, so I had to attempt to erase it and sit then in the drive and watch as my father painted over my creation. Many times since my parents would comment that they are so glad that the garage door incident didn't squash my artistic drive.

 

Is anyone else creative in your family?

My father had a creative mind. He was a problem solver and was always the one to help me on my creative homework projects. Later in his life he found a love for nature and landscape photography. So it could be said that I got my eye (the creative eye) from him.

My family life now is driven by a strong creative pulse. My husband David has been designing and building homes for 25 years. His eye for design in architecture is as keen as mine for fine art. Our daughter, Amanda now 20, who has always had an obvious creative soul, is studying interior design and our son Dominic, 18, surprises us now and then with hints of a latent design talent. Actually, it would be impossible to live in our household and not have  some kind of discerning design ability rub off.

 

What kind of facilities did you have available in your schools?

    When I was in grade school there was no formal art program. The classroom teachers would direct "art and craft projects" but no formal instruction was given. When I was in 6th grade I was so distracted by the urge to draw that I was constantly doodling and not paying attention to my regular subjects in class. Fortunately, my teacher recognized I had a creative passion and art talent that was at a very fragile stage. He consulted with my parents about how to get me to focus on schoolwork while at school and yet have time for and direction in my art. So my parents made a deal with me and at 12 I began private art lessons of drawing and watercolor painting every Saturday morning as long as I would concentrate on my school subjects while at school.

  Every year of junior high and high school I took an art class through my public school but I continued to spend my Saturday mornings at my private art classes until my first year of high school. Three different summers, beginning at age 13, I traveled with my private art instructor and other students of all ages to Colorado for a two-week outdoor watercolor painting workshop. I was always the youngest of the group. These first outdoor painting experiences engrained in my soul a deep love for landscape painting that would take me 20 years to get back to.

 

Did you go to an art college?

    I received a Bachelors of Art from Kansas University in 1981. My major was visual communication. Which was commercial art and graphics. My emphasis was on illustration. I knew that I had to come out of college with skills that would allow me to earn a living, so I sidestepped fine art and painting. At that time my dream was to illustrate children’s books. 

    After college I worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for several local firms and then began freelancing such work full time within 5 years. Just when I was gearing up to put together a new illustration portfolio and seriously approach children’s book publishers I became pregnant with my first child. After Amanda was I born continued freelance design work but again put the children's book illustrator dreams on hold. Two years later my second child Dominic was born and put aside my professional art career to be a very full time creative mom.

    Backing up a bit my husband David and I married at 22, right out of college and within the first year of our marriage he being a student of architecture began designing and building homes. I have always been involved in some way in that business through the years. I've done cleaning, bookkeeping, interior design and color consulting, faux wall painting treatments, color rendering of the homes and promotional material.

    When my son Dominic began first grade it was time for me again to get back to making my dreams come true. I decided to begin by studying painting, as the illustration work I had been doing was very whimsical and I desired a more classical look. At first I considered getting a Masters in Fine Art painting but after visiting an instructor exhibit at Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas (where I still I had continued to live since my college days) it decided that wasn't the route for me as none of their work inspired me.

    I began visiting museums and galleries and sought out and began study with two different painters from my region. Basically for one school year I took a morning painting class once a week. This was my first introduction to oil painting and I stunk at it.

    Every painting I created that year I painted over later but I did listen.  A lot of good information was given to me I just had to process it on my own time. I had noticed that many of the other adults in the class hung on every word of the instructor as well but they had been handicapped by it. When the instructor was doing a demo some of the older ladies would make notes of exactly what colors he had mixed for each spot on the canvas but what bothered me even more was the lack of confidence I saw in another painting student that had been working with this teacher for sometime. He was an excellent painter but he did not do his own work. He painted exactly like our teacher and to top in off even more would bring in his outside work for approval and critique before he took it to his gallery.  I did not want to be him at all.

   From that time on I began painting on my own. It's really true; to learn to paint you really have to paint. Each painting is a lesson for the next and the next an evolution from the one before. I considered my painting time in my studio my own private "masters in painting" time. I knew it was a learning experience with a big learning curve. I critiqued myself continually but did not look for the approval of others in my work.  I knew what I wanted to get and no one else did. So no one else could tell me how to get there. I just had to find my way through.

    Somewhere along that path I fell in love with painting for paintings sake. I no longer had a desire to create kid's books. I liked painting what I wanted - how I wanted it. In the commercial art field I had to create for the desires of others but painting gave me a way to express myself without others editing and input. Another thing that really appealed to me was that I the paintings had a lasting value. They weren't transient throwaway pieces like my advertising work had been but something to be passed through generations.  

 

  Who were your early influences? How did they influence you?

    When I was in second grade my childhood best friend moved next door. Her father, Bill Harrison, had been working in an advertising agency but had just begun to paint professionally fulltime. I thought he was an excellent artist and today I still do. I spent a lot of time at their house playing around as he worked but I would have been content to just sit and watch him all day, everyday. I didn't realize until recently what I gift that early art exposure was to me. I've learned that quite a few artists never knew a "real artist" while growing up and thus never truly thought it was a possibility for them.

What are your current themes and subjects?

     The rural landscape the plains, rolling hills, fields and farms of my region (The US Midwest), have been calling me for years and now is it’s their time.  I see a multitude of colors and enchanting light in this view where many others do not. Traditionally Kansas, my state, has been portrayed by artists with a dull and monotone palette.  After having the opportunity to view a grand exhibit of the early California Impressionists it has been my desire to show the world the Kansas I see full of as much color and light as the inspirational California Impressionists work.

    This last August I had a solo exhibit of 22 rural themed paintings at our National Agricultural Hall of Fame. All were to be of a rural-farming theme and not to be pure landscapes. I enjoyed having an assignment and a reason to concentrate and focus on one theme. I began painting not merely a view that could be seen out the car window or captured in a photo but from my mind and heart.   

Painting from my memories has allowed me to drop the details and keep what is important. The essence of the scene and the emotions that one recalls is what I am after. I usually begin these paintings in bed. Lying still with my eyes closed, it maybe night or early morning or an afternoon rest. I like the quiet so I can be alone with my thoughts visualize and dream without distractions. Sometimes, I am fortunate enough to be able to get up and begin the painting which was dancing in my head but other times I have to "hold that thought" for a time.

    I can only go so long with out painting. The other parts of my life demand quite a bit of my time but I have learned that to be whole, as whole as I can be, I have to have painting as a generous part of that mix. I will also say that I don't believe I could or would be painting what I am today or how I am today if I had not lived as much and as long as I have now. Somehow all of life’s experiences get brought into my art.

 

How do you conduct research for you piece of work?

    As barns are a new subject matter for me, I've been particularly studying them. I crane my neck as I drive noting interesting shapes and details of every barn I pass. I looked through my reference photos for barns and read two books on barn history. I learned that each barn is a certain shape for a particular reason, a special purpose. I have to fully understand a subject before I can truly paint it. Then when it comes time to paint, using this general knowledge, I can build my own barn on my canvas. I'll design the layout first in my mind, graphically stylizing the barn image, but if I question whether a detail I've imagined makes sense I'll review my references.

Describe your workplace or Studio? (Layout, lighting, music, space, silence)

    My studio is in my home on the lower level (a walkout) basement with a full daylight window. It's not a huge room. What I like most about it is that it is out of the traffic of the general activity of my house. I'm tucked in a room behind the stairs and can go unnoticed for hours by my family. They often may not know I am even at home so I can get hours of undisturbed painting time in at a stretch. Above my easel is a ceiling light with bulbs that are made to resemble natural light. To my right under the window I have a countertop height table on which lies my two-foot square glass palette. Under this clear glass pane is a white sheet of mat board making a white surface on which to mix my oil paints.

Quite often I’ll turn on the TV and listen as I paint or I’ll listen to music. I find it is best for me to paint standing up as I am constantly moving from my palette to the canvas and back away from the canvas to assess the progress of my work.

   I have really outgrown this room as just outside the room in our recreation room I am warehousing stacks of frames and unpainted canvasses. Throughout my home wherever there is an empty ledge or wall space my fresh paintings find a temporary home.

 

Which materials do you like using the most?

    I'm sticking with oil paints. Before I oils I worked in pastels soft and oil. I love the limitless possibilities of color, texture, dimension and luminosity that I can achieve with oil paint. Early on in my oil painting I began experimenting with painting with a palette knife. I learned that I could build a painting with layers of colors much like my earlier work with pastels creating interesting surfaces and color combinations. Also at that time I was living with a lot of whole body pain and arthritis. Unsure of the cause of my ailments I sought to limit my exposure to harsh chemicals in my studio. Now, the only time I pick up a brush is when I turn it around to sign my name in to the wet painting.

   My chosen painting tool is a 3" wedge shaped palette knife, which feels like an extension of my hand as I moved back and forth from the palette to my canvas. Every time I wipe the knife clean with a paper napkin before I reload with new color from my palette.

 

What do you see are the essential difference between Fine art and Design disciplines and are there overlaps/gray areas? Is there anyone whose work doesn’t appeal to you? And if so, why?

    I view fine art as authentic self-expression. Some would same art for arts sake. This is where I feel I am now.  I think you are referring to the differences between commercial art and fine art. I define commercial art as work that is created for someone else with a commercial mindset. This includes advertising, product design, graphics, etc. I love good design know matter where it is. 

       What I have a problem with is paintings that are created en masse with a pure (or perhaps impure) mindset as such and marketed as fine art. I just can't go there with my work. I have too many things to say, too much to express to be a paint factory reproducing over and over a hot image.

 

Who or What influences you at the present? How do they influence your work?

    I'm always studying others work although I don't study with them. When I travel I like to visit art galleries. Through those visits and thumbing through art magazines I've found a few select artists that I admire for certain traits. I don't desire to paint just like any of them but I have found that I have eventually incorporated their influences into my work.