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| Background Shay Herring Clanton was born in 1953 in Birmingham, Alabama, the eldest of five children. She grew up in North Alabama and returns there often to her family land near Maysville. She now lives with her husband, Kim Clanton, a glassblower, and her son, Kim Bass Clanton, in Marble Valley near Deerfield Virginia where she maintains her studio. Shay received a BA from Mary Baldwin College with a combined major in studio and art history and an MFA from James Madison University in drawing and painting .She taught drawing, painting and design at Mary Baldwin College and also teaches watercolor workshops at Beverley Street Studio School. Shay lived for 10 years on Hatteras Island, on the North Carolina Outer Banks, where she won recognition for her work in helping to create the Buxton Woods Coastal Reserve. She is currently involved in the movement to stop hydro-fracking and the construction of the fracked gas pipelines in the George Washington National Forest, which borders her home in Marble Valley. Shay is also a student of medical herbalism with a particular interest in native medicinal plants and the Southern Appalachian herbal tradition. Her land in Deerfield is managed as a botanical sanctuary called "Walker Mountain Botanical Sanctuary" and is part of the Botanical Sanctuary Network created by United Plant Savers, an activist and educational non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the habitat of native medicinal plants. In her paintings, inspired by the rivers and streams of her home in the mountains of rural Virginia, or the Alabama countryside of her birthplace, Shay seeks to capture what has informed her life long love of the natural world. In her abstracted watercolors of rivers and streams, she records her perception of a moment in time and the movement and flux of light, shadow and form. Her larger oil paintings are created in a slow process of applying layer after layer of paint while observing the changes of light and weather and season in a particular place over time so that the painting becomes less about the moment and more about a personal connection to place . The quality of light, in both a physical and a symbolic sense, is always an integral part of the work. Contact Shay Herring Clanton 65 Clayton Mill Rd. Deerfield, VA 24432 Phone: 540 939 4738 email: iclanton@marybaldwin.edu Photo Credits Large Watercolors, Watershed, & Herbarium by Brian Arthur - The Artful Image Ponderosa Pine, Ponderosa Pines, White Pine by Ellen Martin All other photographs by Scott F. Smith, Scott Smith Photography |
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Education BA with a combined major in Studio Art and Art History at Mary Baldwin College 1974 Completed course work towards a masters in Art History at Vanderbilt University 1974-1976 MFA in Drawing and Painting at James Madison University 2000 Additional Education Foundations of Medical Herbalism 2007 to 2008 and continuing studies with Kathleen Maier, Sacred Plant Traditions, Charlottesville, Virginia Southern Appalachian Traditional Herbal Medicine continuing studies with Phyllis Light, Southern Appalachian Herbal Traditions, Arab, Alabama Botany for Artists Blue Ridge Community College, 2000 Nature Journaling Across the Curriculum with Claire Walker Leslie Mary Baldwin College Graduate Teacher Education, 2009 Teaching Experience Graduate Teaching Assistantship (Drawing, Painting and Figure Drawing) James Madison University, 1997-2000 Visiting Artist, James Madison University Summer Program at Orkney Springs, Virginia Visiting Artist Gifted and Talented Program Middle and High Schools Staunton,Virginia Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art, Mary Baldwin University, taught Drawing, Painting and Design. 2000 to 2018 Beverley Street Studio School: Weekend Workshops in Watercolor Painting 2005 to present Professional Committees Standards Committee, Staunton Augusta Fine Arts Center, 2006-2009 Standards Committee , Beverley Street Studio School, 2009 to present |
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Selected Recent Exhibitions Collections
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