Clinton Helms started studying art at a very young age and later went on to study at the Lorenzo de Medici Art Institute of Florence, in Florence Italy before receiving his BFA in Illustration from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999. Shortly after graduation, Clinton started C. Helms STUDIO as a freelance illustrator to take on assignments from various magazines and children’s book publishers. In 2001 Clinton retired from the United States Army Reserves with over twenty-one years of service to become a full-time artist. His work has appeared in both solo and group exhibitions in Virginia from his hometown of South Hill to Washington DC. Clinton’s work has also appeared in invitational art shows at the Society of Illustrators in New York City, the Art Institute of Washington in Arlington, VA., and at the Department of Visual Arts at Chowan College in Murfreesboro North Carolina. He is currently a member of the Richmond Illustrators Group, the Washington, Maryland, and Virginia Illustrators Club, and the Portrait Society of America. His work is currently displayed at Crossroads Art Center in Richmond, Virginia, where his has been teaching work shops in painting in oils and acrylics for the past year and a half. He also has been teaching various drawing classes at his Alma Marta as an Adjunct Instructor in the Art Foundation Department for the past four years. Clinton received his MFA in Fine Art from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, with their “Get your Master’s with the Masters Program” in 2007. Clinton is currently co-owner of C&Eart’s Studio, which specializes in imagery for children’s books, commissioned portraits, advertising, graphic design, and photography with his future wife and business partner Ella Harris.

Clinton strongly believes that he was born to be an artist. Representational painting and fine art is his main passion. As a teacher, he believes and teaches his students that in order to become better and successful artist, they must love to draw and learn to draw very well. He teaches them that these same principles also applies to painting and encourages them to always try to make their next drawing or painting better than the first by learning the process of observation which is the key to drawing.

 

As a young artist, he was heavily influenced by the works of the Renaissance Masters’ such as Titian, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Raphael and other great artists work of that time period. By the time he was in high school art he was introduced to the works of Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth, and John Singer Sergeant. Although he continue to admire and study all of these artists’ works, he has shifted his focus to some of the more up to date and contemporary artists and portrait painters of today like Burton Silverman, Daniel Green, and Jacob Collins to name a few. By studying theses artists he discovered all of them have at one time or another been heavily influenced by some of the same artists, and that they all believe that the key to great art is learning to draw well.