2014 Whitewater Valley Art Competition

David Klamen (American, b.1961) is a contemporary painter whose work grows in conjunction with his interest in literature and philosophy, centralized around visual explorations of the questions, "How do I know things?" and "How do I know myself?" Klamen paints figuratively and abstractly, sometimes combining the two by incorporating geometric lines or patterns atop his high finished landscapes. His work is meditative and quiet, engaging the audience with deep tonal values and extreme control, requiring the viewer to look more than once into the complexity of each work. In Klamen's most recent series, Paintings of Paintings, he isolated individual works of art in-situ in museums, turned them on sharp angles and repainted them. Klamen earned his Bachelor's of Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana in 1983 and his Master's of Fine Arts in Painting at the School of the Art Institute in 1985. Klamen is currently Chancellor’s Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University Northwest. He lives and works in Chicago. Klamen is represented in a number of public collections including: the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the Elvehjem Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin and the McNay Museum, San Antonio.