Clara Wells (Born 1990) was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her principal intention is in creating immersive incidences both in creation and viewership. To embrace sensorium and motion, to open a connection and dialogue between the artist and the viewer and between the process and the final product is what she’s striving for. Currently her research and work is in response to relocating to the North from the South Island at the beginning of 2015, and through the idea of material practices re-establishing a sense of presence. Her work is primarily focused on the interplay between abstraction and empathy in experiential filmmaking. Clara works with the long-established animation techniques of direct animation, scratch-film and hand drawn animation. She combines these with distorted and abstract sequences of digital live-action to produce installations, projections and films.
Just recently she also turned a focus to methods of representing empathy and motion in static works. She concentrates on the acts of the artist in ink and small pen on paper drawings. Her artworks aim to engage clients, to concurrently be lost in the experience and to be challenged by the physical realities of art creation and filmmaking. She obtained her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Canterbury. Currently, she works from her studio in Hamilton, New Zealand. She has exhibited in Waikato Museum, NZ Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Christchurch, Skinroom, Good Company Space, Arts Post Galleries, just to name a few. Clara has received many awards, among them the National Youth Art Awards, Parkin Drawing Prize, Lonsdale-Edgar Junior Prize, etc.
