Danny Clayton, Texas Gallery, Houston - Ten Years of Paintings

Danny Clayton: Ten Years of Paintings
Texas Gallery, Houston
November 1 – 15, 2005

Danny Clayton is having the first show of his paintings in Houston in a decade at the Texas Gallery. The installation of the paintings on paper is configured as an altar piece in the back room of the gallery. There are many references to sources as diverse as antique textiles, the I Ching, icongraphic symbols from the writings of Joseph Campbell and Paleolithic artifacts from Arkansas. Danny Clayton creates an intense, obsessive personal iconography which is re-iterated by the painstaking rendering by hand of each work, which often take a year for the artist to complete. Reminiscent of the work of an iconoclast such as Bruce Conner, the pieces are a personal version of mandalas for meditation or hallucination. The artist refers to the works as “yantras” which is a word that could reside somewhere between a mantra and tantra. Of particular significance is a repeated octagonal form that is the center of most of the works and which is an elaboration on a hexagram of three lines… one vertical and two diagonals. This form is the glowing shape in the very center of each work and from which all other elements radiate outwardly.

Danny Clayton was born in Houston, Texas, and currently resides and works in Mexico City. In recognition of his adopted cultural base, Danny Clayton opened the show on November 1, to coincide with the celebration of the Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.

TEXAS GALLERY
2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019
www.texgal.com