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Artist Bio:
Clinton Helms started drawing and painting at a very young age. After graduating from high school in 1978, he studied art at Virginia Commonwealth University for a short while before enlisting in the U.S. Army National Guard/Reserves. Clinton returned to Virginia Commonwealth University in 1996 to continue his art education. Later, he went on to study at the Lorenzo de Medici Art Institute of Florence in Florence, Italy. After which, he received his BFA in Illustration from the Communication Arts Department in 1999. In 2007, Clinton received his MFA in Fine Art from Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Shortly after graduation, Clinton started C. Helms Studios as a freelance illustrator and 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 throughout Virginia and the United States. He is a member of the Society of Illustrators in Los Angeles, California, the Art Institute of Washington in Arlington, Virginia, the Richmond Illustrators Group in Richmond, Virginia, the Washington, Maryland, and Virginia Illustrators Club, the Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the Portrait Society of America.
His work is currently displayed at Crossroads Art Center in Richmond, Virginia, where his has been teaching workshops in painting for the past three years. For the past five year he has taught various drawing studios at his Alma Marta (VCU). In addition he is currently teaching drawing and painting classes at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia.
Clinton is currently co-owner and founder of C&E Arts Studios, which specializes in commissioned portraits, imagery for children’s books, advertising, graphic design, and photography with his wife and business partner Ella Helms.
Early and Current Artists influences:
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 of that time period. In high school 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, he has shifted his focus to some of the more contemporary artists and portrait painters of today like Burton Silverman, Daniel Green, and Jacob Collins. By studying theses artists he discovered they were also heavily influenced by some of the same great painters; they too believe that the key to great art is learning to draw well.
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