PROVENANCE

Private Collection, Marlborough

Purchased by the current owner from Janne Land Gallery 1981

Working away in his paint-encrusted studio with Jimi Hendrix's guitar cranked up to full noise, often going days without sleep, Clairmont was the archetypal tortured expressionist. A 1981 documentary explored his chaotic Mt Eden bohemian abode, a house populated by the found objects and abandoned furniture that would inspire his dense, hallucinatory images. At one point the camera fixes on a single lino print that reads Art is my life. One would eventually consume the other - three years after the film was aired, Clairmont tragically took his own life at the age of 34. His work is usually classed as expressionist or neo-expressionism, using vivid colour and distorted forms, often with domestic interiors as subject matter. Clairmont's early works tend to be focussed and detailed where as works produced in his final decade had a tendency to be looser and less intense. His practice was informed by the works of Vincent van Gogh and Francis Bacon, and he was influenced by his close friendships with artists Tony Fomison and Allen Maddox.