Sep 11, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 12 segments
Claire Downes Whitehurst is a painter, printmaker, and ceramicist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work explores the intersections of botanical form, religious iconography, and the abstract…
Claire Downes WhitehurstGuest
Dan GratzHostAnd so PAPA has its own similar identity of this atelier of drawing from the model or the motif, a still life, a figure.
And really that's where I, I did my undergrad at the University of Mississippi and my the head of painting there is Philip Jackson.
He's very talented, but still life, very traditional, very, um, really, really lusciously rendered, you know, like Dutch still life from the darkness of the back, all these really bright objects emerge, but super technical, super traditional.
I was really figurative and I painted the landscape, the figure and still life a lot when I was younger.
I kept winding away from it, you know, like pulling the things out that I really
in and that slowly over time became kind of form and pattern and abstraction.
That's where I found, that's where I, that's where I felt I could really build a room that I could sit in, you know, and escape into and kind of find these ways of making meaning and making pictures that, that felt honest.
Um, but I think I, I, you know, I don't know what it would be like.
I wonder if I would be a really tight, hyper realist painter if I was, you know, trained by an abstract expressionist or something.
Um, I don't know if you bolt against whatever you and I kind of grew up with, but, um, It sounds like you kind of did the same.
And if you can maintain, retain your sense of freedom and creativity and spirit, then you've really done well.
And just showing me, just looking at your work, we had a brief little studio visit before this conversation.
And so PAPA has its own similar identity of this atelier of drawing from the model or the motif, a still life, a figure.
And really that's where I, I did my undergrad at the University of Mississippi and my the head of painting there is Philip Jackson.
He's very talented, but still life, very traditional, very, um, really, really lusciously rendered, you know, like Dutch still life from the darkness of the back, all these really bright objects emerge, but super technical, super traditional.
I was really figurative and I painted the landscape, the figure and still life a lot when I was younger.
I kept winding away from it, you know, like pulling the things out that I really
in and that slowly over time became kind of form and pattern and abstraction.
That's where I found, that's where I, that's where I felt I could really build a room that I could sit in, you know, and escape into and kind of find these ways of making meaning and making pictures that, that felt honest.
Um, but I think I, I, you know, I don't know what it would be like.
I wonder if I would be a really tight, hyper realist painter if I was, you know, trained by an abstract expressionist or something.
Um, I don't know if you bolt against whatever you and I kind of grew up with, but, um, It sounds like you kind of did the same.
And if you can maintain, retain your sense of freedom and creativity and spirit, then you've really done well.
And just showing me, just looking at your work, we had a brief little studio visit before this conversation.
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