My inspiration has come from sources as varied as Asian landscape painting and prints, calligraphy, and appropriated images from contemporary art.

“Natural Abstractions” series is my homage to the 19th century Japanese master printmakers whose graphic style greatly influenced the European Impressionists. In this series I create contemporary interpretations of nature motifs used and repeated by many generations of Japanese printmakers. I use source photos taken from the natural world to create mixed media artworks that I finish with a unique gold foil process that I developed. Each work is executed in a positive and negative, in order to articulate the duality that is the basis of much of oriental culture.

Video introduction: https://youtu.be/Ls5XbDhDW9Y

Website: www.billclaps.net

I’m fascinated with the natural world, which I capture and translate into compositional elements, which at times recall geometric abstraction, oriental calligraphy, and cellular processes. My unique technique recalls historic gilding practices, updated for the 21st century by combining them with photographic and digital processing technologies. In recreating this history, I create dynamic images that live in balance between figuration and abstraction.