Philip Clairmont abjured landscape entirely finding his subject matter in the rooms he occupied. He frequently included his own visage in his works, representing himself as the obsessive artist apart from society—distracted, dishevelled, angst-ridden. In Large Window Painting, also called Garden Still Life, his face appears small and skull-like within a circle in front of a vase filled with flowers or paintbrushes. The space depicted is difficult to make sense of and filled with chaos, as if caught in a spiritual earthquake.
Text courtesy of The Fletcher Trust Collection.