Claire Menegatti lives and works from her home studio in Los Angeles, CA. She graduated in 2010 from California State University Long Beach with her BFA in Illustration. While pursuing her education, Claire worked to perfect her skills in the Figurative Arts with repetitive courses in Life Drawing, Life Painting, Costumed Figure, and Anatomy, which not only resulted in her having an inordinate amount of credits under her belt, but also honed her now superior eye, senses, and skills. It is this dedication and passion to mastering her understanding of form, color, composition, and representation that is visible and ubiquitous in all of her work. In 2008, she received the John Lincoln Figure Drawing Award from CSULB. Her greatest skills are in the traditional methods of art creating, particularly with oils, watercolors, and inks. Her work has a feminine, delicate, and organic aesthetic and leans towards whimsical, charismatic, or melancholy moods. Not just the figure, but the idea of Life is exhibited in all of her work. She enjoys representing the curious, beautiful, and sometimes bizarre nature found in the anatomy and textures of wildlife. Her wildlife images show her child-like exuberance for life and it is enthralling; while her deeper emotions are most palpable in her figurative images. She renders the subject, giving the viewer something to reference in each work, creating a narrative. Consistent in her practice, she renders almost hyper-realistically what is most important; while abstracting what is not. Surrounding and interplaying with the main substance of the narrative, she creates an atmospheric mood. She says that often when she wakes up from a dream, or recalls past events from her life, it is always the mood that comes to mind first. This impresses and inspires her. More potent than the details, are the moods of these dreams and memories. She says when she discusses her work with viewers, they say that it is the detail and craftsmanship that draws
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