Citizen Welles

 

Claire Oak

  1921 - 2013 (biography)

1971  

color screenprint 

20 1/16 x 16 1/4" image size 

pencil, lower right 

VII-X 

pencil dated after signature, titled in lower center and editioned on lower left; paper chop in lower left 

 

white Strathmore Artist wove 

published 

artist 

20351 

$125.00 

Canadian-born, California-based artist Claire Oaks lived in Montreal, Paris, and New York working as a fashion designer and owner of an atelier in Manhattan after attending art school in the late 1930s and early 40s. Following marriage to Alan Oaks, a radio announcer in New York City, they relocated to Los Angeles, California, where she continued to work as a designer and artist and her life overlapped with those in radio, television, and film. In “Citizen Welles” her sense of design and humor is showcased on the sheet, where a stylized, abstract Orson Welles is disguised as his most famous character - Citizen Kane.

It was in the early 1970s that Oak first discovered watercolor, at which point she gradually began to focus solely on the delicate medium. Prior to this, many of her works were in oils, pen and ink, and screenprints. Here, the fluidity that would influence her watercolor shows in her expert handling of the screen, as the clothes of the faceless figure begin to melt and fold down upon each other, hat, cigar, tie, and all.