2nd Place – Overall
Wayne Claypatch
“New Friend with Cockney Accents”
Looking at Wayne Claypatch’s work one is transported to another time and place. His figurative drawings and paintings often are a clashing of worlds, in which iconic characters of the past exist in unparalleled situations. His unique style of painting features colorful swirls of oil paint. The work itself is eccentric and nostalgic, reimagining images and characters from Claypatch’s childhood.
So often, we forget to nurture the child that is inside all of us. Claypatch’s work speaks directly to that sense of untouched wonder and creativity. The “rules” of art ask us, as viewers, to categorize what we see, in order to better understand it. To categorize Claypatch’s work would be to take away the thing that makes his work notable; it does not fit constraints or conforms, it exists as an extension of the artist’s imagination.