Biography
Claudia Selene is a mostly self-taught artist. Homeschooled by counter-cultural environmentalist
parents, she spent countless hours drawing, painting, and writing poetry. Her family moved from
place to place, living in communes, trailer parks and rental houses across the western United
States.
When she left home at 17, she traveled extensively, eventually finding herself at the
Ravenswood Atelier in Chicago. After a year of intensive training in sight-size drawing, she left
the Atelier to share a studio with portrait artist Mary Qian. She taught herself color by making
painstakingly realistic paintings of simple objects. As her skills improved, she began to paint
increasingly complex things, including the human portrait and figure, clouds, and transparent
glass. She is currently studying more illusory subjects such as flame, fog, storms moving in, and
things in the process of melting and breaking.
Artist Statement
Artwork is Claudia’s way of exploring her fundamental questions about life. Her latest series of
paintings, “If I Should Rise”, focuses on the dichotomy of human nature: When compassionate
individuals gather with others who share some characteristic (ideology, race, gender, social
class, etc.) why do they form insular groups that become violent and irrational? Despite the
creativity and generosity abundant in the human species, why does our biological success result
in misery, oppression, and environmental destruction?
Claudia’s Work
