Large Window Painting

Clairmont abjured landscape entirely finding subject matter in the rooms he occupied and frequently including his own image as part of the clutter. In many such works Clairmont represents himself as the obsessive artist apart from society, dishevelled, distracted, angst-ridden. Here he presents his own face as a small skull-like image within a circle as part of a jug filled with paintbrushes itself a part of a chaos-filled room caught in a spiritual earthquake. The artist held his first one-person show in Christchurch in 1969 thereafter exhibiting with the Christchurch Group.

In 1973, married with a daughter, he moved to Wellington where he worked as a postman, painting whenever he could. It was not until 1977 when he moved to Auckland that he was able to work full-time as a painter. From that time he increasingly came to view himself as a visionary, consciously cultivating a bohemian persona. In 1983 an Arts Council Travel Grant enabled him to visit the USA. He died by his own hand at Auckland in 1984.