STEPHEN ST. CLAIRE

Stephen St. Claire grew up painting mostly landscapes and still life, but somewhere around 2001, he 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 he is 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.