Michele Clement

Michele Clement

Clement, a storyteller and craftsperson, works through composition and metaphor to tap the female psyche and directs the viewer to engage in a quest for understanding. Her subjects are not held fast to one philosophy, thought, or time, but rather a representation and exploration of universal forms.

Through her lens, she seeks to understand how the visual ascetics and physical properties of these forms predicate our destiny and effect how one’s experiences are different from another. This exploration imbues her still life photographs with an anthropomorphic quality: her dewy roses are seductive and her lilies (tubular, open, inviting) are suggestive and sexual, a sexuality which is not present in her nudes. Instead her nudes capture the curves and soft slopes of the female form, all the while cultivating a subtle visualization of it and placing it on a separate platform from the sexual. Her truncated marble-like nudes pay homage to antiquity. They remain a study of beauty found in the contours of the female form, as well as the implication of these configurations.

In her landscapes, working intuitively from a pinhole camera, Clement is able to capture the moment of a hot day on Morrow Bay while her imagery alludes to something more than a lone boat teetering softly in the water. It speaks of the visceral moments when serenity, solitude, independence, and forsaking come together. She paints a picture everyone can relate to, and this is where the beauty of her work lies.