Rob Clayton was born on 1963 in Dayton, currently lives and works in Pasadena and Christian Clayton was born on 1967 in Denver, currently lives and works in Valencia. Los Angeles artists Rob and Christian Clayton are brothers, collaborators, and the best of friends. Collectively they work as the Clayton Brothers, producing dynamic, improvisational, yet purposeful and humane paintings, installations and mixed-media works on paper. The Clayton Brothers? approach to art-making is a collaborative process: one brother begins a painting, then hands it off to the other, then back again, and so on. Their art is narrative, autobiographical, uncanny and intuitive, culled from the secret language of a shared childhood. Rather than nostalgic musings about youth, the Clayton Brothers? recollections of the past are revealed through a twisted lens of adulthood. At once epic and intimate, the Clayton Brothers? layered paintings become stories where the matrix of two psyches ? independent, but related ? weave together elements of memory and the subconscious using the seemingly innocuous ? the TV dinner, the toothbrush, the dastardly squirrel- as metaphors and messengers.For brothers Rob and Christian Clayton collaboration is more than a process: the concept of symbiosis resonates through every aspect of their paintings and installations. In a practice devoid of ego and restraint, the Clayton brothers develop intense compacted narratives on an intuitive basis. Rob and Christian Clayton seldom work on the same canvas at the same time, or discuss of their projects during making. Playing off their unspoken synergy, they take turns inventing, adding to, and editing each piece, propelling their ?stories? through spontaneous improvisation. Entwining their independent approaches, styles, and palettes, their works operate as co-authored epics, fusing the concept of self with the communal.



Working from their Californian high street studio, the Clayton brothers draw inspiration from their immediate environment, incorporating local businesses, neighbourhood regulars, and snippets of overheard conversations as subjects for their paintings. Composing their pieces conjunctively, motifs, gestures, places, and figures reoccur within different works, creating inter-linked dramatic scripts. Set on collaged canvases, the physical layering of their surfaces reflects their condensed tableaux. Approaching painting as a visual representation of pure energy, everyday scenes explode in vortexes of blinding colour, animated movement, and product placement, giving the effect of viewing every frame of a film simultaneously. Through presenting a locality, the Clayton brothers relate the personal to the global. Offering a vision of America-as-it-is, they celebrate and share all its diverse, spectacular, and solitary splendour.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006

? Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Pasadena

? The Armory Show, Bellwether Gallery, New York

? Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison

? Bellwether Gallery, New York

? Wishy Washy, Bellwether Gallery, New York

2004

? Art Statements, Clayton Brothers, Art Basel Miami

? I Come From Here, Mackey Gallery, Houston

2003

? Six Foot Eleven, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles

2002

? Candy Lackey, Roq La Rue Gallery, Seattle

2001

? Green Pastures, La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles

Conclusions:

Rob and Christian Clayton seldom work on the same canvas at the same time, or discuss of their projects during making. Playing off their unspoken synergy, they take turns inventing, adding to, and editing each piece, propelling their ?stories? through spontaneous improvisation. Entwining their independent approaches, styles, and palettes, their works operate as co-authored epics, fusing the concept of self with the communal.

What to Do Next...

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