"There's a lot of deep blue, a
lot of black, a lot of scumbled-over
pink, red, flesh tones and oranges, and greens mostly in the
viridian family. These are not nature paintings; you won't
see many earth tones, and even the neutrals buzz with energy.
The world you see, beautifully ordered within the painted
rectangles and within the clean and elegant gallery space,
is a world of dreaming, not of hanging out in the quotidian.
Calligraphy reigns over many observed shapes. You can't read
it. It's wiggly and private." Susan Christian, the Weekly Volcano, July
13, 2017
"Clayton’s
paintings are ... animated by orchestrated contrasts that
are always at work in them: rough versus smooth,
bright verses dark, active verses passive. Forms sweep across the
surface or explode upward or struggle against each other in
dance-like configurations. While some of the works from the
90s have a velvety quality, the later works have a thick texture
and the colors are often toned down with lots of intermixing of
light colors." Dave Davidson, Tacoma Weekly, July 2017
"His mixed-media canvases are brilliant billows of color that can barely be
contained. ...These paintings are muscular. The color is bold, unafraid and
willing to be ugly. With so much going on here, the canvases could seem busy or
cluttered, but they don’t.”
Douglas McLennan, The News Tribune, Tacoma, WA,
Jan. 18, 1996
“Active surfaces with intensely colored and layered biomorphic
forms ... still rich in the language of Abstract Expressionism.”
Joanna Koss, Art Access, Seattle, WA, September
1996
"Clayton swaths his subjects in bright hues and broad strokes, lifts
them with sharp edges off muted floors, and moves us with primal
pulses of silent color."
Steve Reed, The Beachcomber, Vashon, WA, March 2000
