We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Clayton Singleton a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Clayton, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One of the most meaningful projects I have worked on, was an art show titled Look Beyond. The show was meaningful because it attempted to give voice where voice was not always heard. My middle son is on the autism spectrum. As a result, we were consistently looking for events and avenues for his form of expression. As you may figure, parents of children on the spectrum shared, events, social times, educational opportunities, health information, and opportunities for celebrating our kids’ desires. Too often, when people hear autism, they don’t consider that members of the community have dreams, desires, and abilities just like anyone else.

Being a portrait artist, I had an idea… what if I created portraits of some of the kids highlighting their interests and what they may want rondo with their lives. The parents sent me pictures of the kids and we (all) held question and answer sessions. One guy liked cooking and wanted to be a chef. Another young man was into surfing. My son enjoyed drumming. There was a young lady who was selling her handmade jewelry, and yet another fellow was really into video games and wanted to be a gamer.

When they came to the art exhibit and saw their portraits hanging on the wall in a gallery, joy radiated from their faces. Not only were the students ecstatic, but their parents were filled with joy.

Too often parents are told what their children can’t do. It was nice to see and celebrate what our kids can do, and they did it with style. You could see the pride in their faces when posing next to their portrait.

Clayton, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Saying yes to myself is what got me started painting as a professional. When I was in college, I won an award of merit in a professional art show for my painting Woman with a Remote. Seemingly, I was good enough to go for it, lol so I did. The work was a realist expressionistic work that examined what electronic and digital technology was doing to our society. This was in 1992. Fast forward to now and the woman was truly accurate in the advance that tech would rule our day to day lives. These early expressionistic works live through my current work in that I seek to interpret the subjects whose portraits I paint. I’m looking to capture the essence of a person not just trying to capture a likeness… a photograph can do that. I want the result of conversation. The after thoughts of the person once they leave my presence, you know? That’s what I attempt to do. I want to capture the person I keep thinking about once we’ve parted. I want to capture to residue of the person’s personality and character. The colors I use to create depth of skin tone is key in my process… it’s as if I’m painting from the hypodermis layer up to the epidermis layer. In fact, my entire process depends on layering. One of the main things I want potential clients to understand is the layering is essential to the look and tactile feel of my paintings. I start by painting an abstraction called the belonging layer. Next, I use stamps I make to repeatedly stamp Adinkra symbols in a quilting format. Afterwards, I paint what I call the flourishing layers with curved patterns and floral/ geometric wall paper-like designs. One of the cool aspects of the process is some of the paint raises and protrudes. After I add graphite writing…an authentic…or thought layer, if you will… They are a stream of consciousness written as it comes to me. Lastly, I paint a portrait or figure over all of the layers adding other symbols and/or flowers to support the meanings of the work. What happens is the raised and protruding elements of the painting process show through the top layer. The resulting effect look like markings or scarings on the subject’s face, skin, and drapery. These remnants are evidence of what has happened before “now” that still affects “now.” Too often, we seek to erase the pain and ugliness… I wish to keep it… and celebrate the imperfections of living life.

I’m most proud of students I’ve had who come back to me and share that I’ve inspired them to thrive in the art world. I’m equally proud of a group of young working artists for whom I curated a show during the end of COVID titled Light From All Sides. Being a dad and husband are paramount and feed my purpose for creating. When I creating art works, I want to share with us all that we can create what we want to create of our lives. Using verbal and visual language, I want folk to understand that they can create their own stories. We are not relegated to the script written by others. We… each of us get to design our lives; perseverance, education, aspiration and beauty are essential in this journey.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I want people to own original works of art. That’s my goal. Granted, I’d love them to own my work :-), however, just merely owning an original is equally important. Here’s the nudge about original works… there is only one of them ever made in the history of human kind. It’s a hand-made version of the human entity. We are the only opportunity for us in the history of the universe. Just one of us. Original work is much the same… with that said… each piece has it’s own dynamic. The work doesn’t have to be famed or by a “professional” artist or some up and coming/ investment worthy work… It should be a piece the person connects to in some way. Whether it’s the color, size, shape, movement or mood… there should be connection; something that makes you want to put it on display in your favorite space.

I want to make art that people want to live with; that they make part of their everyday lives… I want my work to be like appliances and furniture… it’s like, you have to get a Singleton when you move out or move up or move across… it doesn’t matter… I want folk to spice their lives with my work, furnish their dreams with my desperate need to inspire them. I want people to remember to love, to love themselves, and to love life.

When they get up in the morning, I want my work to greet them and assure them that they have whatever it takes to get through their day and shine like the sun. I want my work to hug them like a loving parent sending them off to school to learn how to love life, again.

That’s my mission driving my creative journey. I wanna remind people they are enough.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2007 my mom died. In 2008, we were in the beginnings of the great recession. My mind and mood were still slow and depressed from my mom’s passing. Trip part is, the bills didn’t stop. At the time the way my bank account was set up, I depended on selling work make ends meet and overlap. No body wanted to purchase work… at least not my work. Well long story short, I had a talk with myself and asked, who was I at the end of the day? What was my “thing” at the end of the day, all things considered.

I came to the conclusion that I was a portrait artist at the end of the day. For all it’s worth, I can create likenesses of people and capture some essence. Facebook was really popping by now. I had an idea. I’d always enjoyed square paintings. mmmm… square paintings look like FB then profile pics. I had an idea. I will paint people’s profile pics on a 12’x12″ canvas for, wait for it…… $35. Yep! Thirty-five dollars. I figured that number people would pay and did they! I was overwhelmed. I did it though. I worked through the next couple of years paintings Faces of Facebook. The prices slowly increased as the economy improved. Through that act of resilience, over the years, prices went from 35, to 45, to 55, to 85, to 125, to 225. Now those same 12′ x 12″ portrait paintings sell from $550 – $850. Now that’s being resilient!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.claytonsingleton.com
• Instagram: @claytonsingletonfineart
• Facebook: @claytonsingletonfineart and @claytonsingleton1
• Linkedin: @claytonsingleton
• Twitter: @claytoncanpaint
• Youtube: @claytonsingletonfineart