Claudia Selene has spent her life immersed in the arts, including the visual
arts, music, dance and acrobatics. She studied classical drawing, painting, sculpture and
anatomy in Chicago, at the Ravenswood Atelier, the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art
and the Drawing Workshop. Her work has been shown in galleries in Illinois, Michigan,
Indiana and Arizona.
Claudia spent two years as a research assistant in a neuroscience lab at Rush
University in Chicago. What she learned there about the way the brain processes new
information and develops mental and muscular skills, has informed the way she teaches and
practices art. She is currently teaching students of all ages and skill levels at the Ann Arbor Art
Center and privately. Work by her students can be seen HERE
As a painter, I am primarily interested in bringing attention to the complex beauty of ordinary
people, objects and spaces. My work focuses on the physical beauty of surfaces meeting
different types of light, as well as a kind of soul, or inner beauty that comes from the memories
and feelings the image conjures in the viewer. WIthin compositions of familiar things, I
sometimes enjoy playing with reality: Being able to paint realistically is a fine opportunity to
explore the impossible. It has also given me the tools to dig deeper into complex situations
through visual metaphor.