Artists
Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Claire Sower is a contemporary painter and instructor whose work explores landscape and still life through colour, texture, and imagination. Claire's paintings are characterized by their vibrant palettes, intuitive mark-making, and richly layered surfaces created with oil paint, cold wax, and oil sticks. Drawing inspiration from the natural world, she creates semi-abstract compositions that transform familiar landscapes into expressive and evocative spaces. Claire teaches painting from her studio at Parker Street, with a strong focus on composition, colour theory, and mark making. In particular, she loves to mentor her students and help them find their unique language as artist. Claire has exhibited in New York, Toronto, and Vancouver, and her work can be found in private and corporate collections in Canada and abroad.
My work explores the space between the natural world as we perceive it visually and experience it emotionally. Using abstraction, colour, and intuitive mark-making, my work is shaped as much by memory and imagination as by observation. Colour is central to my practice. By reinterpreting and exaggerating the hues of nature, I invite viewers to experience familiar environments in new ways and consider how personal experience influences what we see. Through layered surfaces and expressive gestures, my paintings seek to evoke a sense of wonder, connection, and possibility rather than describe a specific place.