Stephen McClymont
Stephen McClymont was born in Sydney, Australia. He lived in England (London) where his family moved when he was 9 years old. In London he spent several years with the family of musicians, Hepzibah and Yahudi Menuhin. In 1969 Stephen McClymont entered the National Art School in Sydney, Australia where he graduated in 1974 with a Degree in sculpture.
In the late 70s he left Sydney for New York to study at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture. In New York he met with and studied under the Abstract Expressionist painter Robert Motherwell. He also became Joan Mitchell’s assistant in New York as well as in her country home in Vetheuil, France.
Stephen McClymont left New York in 1986 for Paris with his wife and daughter, spending their summers in Greece. In Paris he was a senior teacher of painting at the Parisian campus of Parsons School of Design. Since January 2002 he has lived with his family in Denver, Colorado, moving there for one year, where he accepted a senior teaching position in the Fine Arts Department at Boulder University.
| 2002 | Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane, Australia |
| 2002 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 2001 | Galerie B.O.B, Paris, France |
| 2000 | Australian Embassy, Berlin, Germany |
| 2000 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 1999 | Australian Embassy, Washington, D.C. |
| 1999 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 1998 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 1997 | Southern Vermont Art Center, Vermont |
| 1997 | Galerie Toft, Paris, France |
| 1997 | The Australian Book Shop, Paris, France |
| 1996 | Villa Radet, Paris, France |
| 1994 | Cit International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1992 | Parsons Gallery, Paris, France |
| 1990 | Villa Radet, Paris, France |
| 1990 | Princton Paris Research, Paris, France |
| 1989 | Galerie Jean-Pierre Haik, Paris, France |
| 1987 | Cité International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1987 | Australian Embassy, Paris, France |
| 1987 | Villa Radet, Paris, France |
| 1983 | Gallery Hydrohoos, Athens, Greece |
| 1977 | Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney, Australia |
| 1975 | Hogarth Gallery, Sydney, Australia |
| 2002 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 2002 | Galerie B.O.B. Paris, France | 2001 | Absolut Vodka. “Absolut Secret” Espace Tajan, Paris, France |
| 2001 | Parsons School of Design. Paris, France |
| 2001 | Beckel-Odille-Boicos Galerie, Paris, France |
| 2000 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 2000 | New York Studio School, Curated by Irving Sandler, New York, NY |
| 1999 | New York Studio School, Alumni show, New York, NY |
| 1999 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 1998 | Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL |
| 1998 | Parsons School, Faculty Show, New York, NY |
| 1998 | St. Stephens College, Rome, Italy |
| 1997 | New York Studio School, New York, NY |
| 1996 | Salon du TRAIT, Paris |
| 1996 | New York Studio School, New York, NY |
| 1995 | Cité International des Arts. ‘Arts Graphic’. Paris, France |
| 1995 | Parsons School of Design. Paris, France |
| 1995 | Musée Adzac. Paris, France |
| 1994 | Salon du “TRAIT”, Paris |
| 1994 | Cité International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1992 | Parsons School of Design, New York, NY |
| 1992 | Cité International des Arts. Paris, France |
| 1992 | Chambre de Commerce des Etats Unis, Paris |
| 1991 | Cité International des Arts. Paris, France |
| 1990 | Cité International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1990 | Salon du “TRAIT”, Paris, France |
| 1990 | Biennial d’Arts Graphiques de Saint-Maur, Musée de Villa Medicis, Saint-Maur, France |
| 1989 | Thomson Gallery, New York, NY |
| 1989 | XXI International Festival of Painting, Cagnes sur Mer |
| 1989 | Hommage À Shakespeare, Cercle de l’Union Interalliée, Paris, France |
| 1988 | Cité International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1988 | Exceptionalle Vente de Tableaux et Sculpture des Années 50 à 87, Rambouillet, France |
| 1988 | Galerie Galise, Thonon-les-Bain, France |
| 1987 | Cité International des Arts, Paris, France |
| 1985 | Gallery Hydrohoos, Athens, Greece |
| 1983 | Judith Selkowitz Fine Arts, New York, NY |
| 1980 | New York Studio School, New York, NY |
| 1977 | Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney, Australia |
| 1976 | Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney, Australia |
| 1975 | Rex Irwin Gallery, Sydney, Australia |
| 1974 | “Painters for the Labor Party”, Sydney, Australia |
| 1969 | Mirror/Waratah Festival, Sydney, Australia |
| 1995 | 'A Place in Tuscany' by David Malouf, edition of 25 copies, lithography |
| 1988 | 'The Raven' by Edgar Allan Poe, edition of 21 copies, lithography |
| 1986 | 'The Waste Land' by T.S. Eliot |
| 1985 | 'The Unknown Masterpiece' by Honoré de Balzac |
| 1984 | 'Le Cimetière Marin' by Paul Valery |
“Reading Stephen McClymont”
by Deborah J. Haynes
How do we read abstraction? More to the point, how do we interpret images that are born of experience in the phenomenal and elemental world, but whose form does not readily reveal those mysteries?
Start with the surface. Color seems to transcend or replace narrative. The subject is indigo, with azure, emerald, vermilion, crimson, ochre, black. This colorful brilliance becomes a narrative about space and time. Texture is scraped and stroked. The method, obviously intuitive. The surface shimmers, breaks, catches light. Then, associations and metaphors as a world appears. Everywhere is the great blue and we are submerged. The paintings, taken as a whole, offer a phenomenology of water.
Stephen McClymont’s paintings are simultaneously epic and intimate, heroic and personal. His work strives for the universal and does not seek to express the particularities of personal or cultural identity. These are paintings of experience that transcend such categories. We feel the pull toward nature, yet we are afraid of it. We climb mountains. We, like McClymont, swim in the sea. But unlike the painter, we do not usually give form to that luminous and mysterious world.
For nineteenth-century painters from Frederick Church to Théodore Géricault, water served as an“in-between” in the elements in the landscape: in between the earth and the sky. In McClymont’s paintings, water is the medium. Our invisible bodies are allied with water, part of the water, and filled with water. In creating a space that seeks to express this contact with the elemental forces of nature, we are reminded that the universe is simultaneously matter and spirit. Merging with this boundless vastness, we know that we are nothing. We are like specks of marble dust that coat the sea floor off the Greek island of Paros, where old quarries no longer produce stone.
In reading these paintings, the contemplative sublime is given form. We observe and reflect as we, too, swim in this sea of space and time. Water is an alchemical agent, its constantly changing character instructing us to be fluid and receptive to the flow of things. The past with its shipwrecks and glorious achievements is as distant, really, as the future with its technoseductive promises. Here, now, only fluidity, only space. Only time to muse, and to be.
Jamestown, Colorado
July 2002
| Stephen McClymont | |
| new work | |
| September 13-October 16, 2002 | |
| includes: | |
| 10 color plates | |
| artist resume | |
| “Reading Stephen McClymont” by Deborah J. Haynes |
For a copy of this catalogue please contact Lydon Fine Art.
“Medusa”
2001, oil on linen, 183" x 163"
