Claire will be featured in an upcoming exhibition “The Life of the Tree” at the gallery, which is housed in a historic Craftsman-style cottage that was originally apart of the Worthington estate. In fact, the gallery, near the legendary Shawnee Inn, was once a craft studio that produced the now highly-collectible Shawnee Lenape Indian technique, reed baskets.
Examples of Claire’s work at the gallery include a series of pieces done in collaboration with her artist husband Emil Lukas. These creations feature a textural element done in plaster by Emil, like bubbles on a stream or the fine veining of a leaf, combined with an organic-themed watercolor by Claire. She says Emil creates the plaster portion first, then they jointly decide what image Claire will add to complete the piece; like a clump of wildflowers or a scavenged arrowhead.
Claire began working with watercolors while in high school. Then the medium took a back seat in her artistic life while she earned a degree in drawing. “A lot of people find watercolor very difficult,” Claire says. “But I went right back to it after college. It was just like riding a bike.”
There was a professional hiatus in Claire’s life when childcare dominated her daily calendar. When she started painting again, she did only single subjects – a disembodied leaf, an abandoned cocoon – because that’s all the time she could carve out for herself. Now family commitments allow her to create more complex images, like a leaf together with its stem and branch: “whole botanicals in the traditional style,” as she describes them. For the past 10 years, her work has been primarily watercolor botanicals.
Claire is also very excited about two current collaborative projects. One is The WE Project, in conjunction with Connexions Gallery in Easton, PA. In this project, 114 artists are working on 10 × 10 panels. Four artists will ultimately work on each panel, which is then passed along to other artists who add their creative input. The final work of art is a surprise even to the artists themselves – they never know what the next creative talent will add to
the panel!
Claire is involved in a second, similar collaborative project with the Nazareth Artists Exchange. She says she enjoys this multi-artist approach, as it frees her to work in materials and styles she doesn’t ordinarily use – like acrylic paint layered over maps and applied as strata of varying sizes. “I love the colors, and I’m using all different widths on the panels.” The hues and thickness of the stripes represent different events in her life: narrow and red for the loss of a loved one, wide and green for prosperity.
Claire’s nature-inspired work has a delicate beauty, while her focus on less than perfect botanical materials gives it an unexpected dark and sophisticated twist. “If it’s dead or dying, my friends all know to save it for me,” she explains. Art fans should also look forward to her colorful collaborative panels from the local artists’ projects. This painter exemplifies some of the best and brightest of the Poconos’ creative talent. n
For more information on The Shawnee Gallery and Claire Lukas’ work, go to http://web.mac.com/cgriffin66/iWeb/The_Shawnee_Gallery_18356/Shawnee_Gallery_Home.html.
