"Through my artworks and photographs, I try to capture this light that shifts over time, like a breath of energy that connects us to everything around us."
Bill Claps is an American visual artist, photographer, and filmmaker born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. He lives and works between New York City and Val Camonica, Italy. A graduate of Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree, Claps studied painting and art history at Harvard before continuing his artistic training at the Art Students League in New York and in Florence, Italy.
Throughout his career, Claps has developed a multidisciplinary practice that combines photography, painting, video, performance, and digital technologies. His work explores universal themes that transcend cultural boundaries, drawing inspiration from art history, language, Asian landscape painting, expressionism, and contemporary visual culture.
Central to his practice is the series Natural Abstractions, an ongoing body of work that examines the transformative effect of light in nature. Influenced by traditional Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, these works reflect on impermanence, change, and humanity's relationship with the natural world. Through a unique mixed-media process refined over more than fifteen years, Claps combines photography, painting, gilding, and advanced digital techniques to create works that continuously reveal new textures, reflections, and visual experiences.
Claps' works have been exhibited internationally at institutions and venues including Today Art Museum in Beijing, MOMA Tbilisi, Photo Basel, Palazzo Corsini in Rome, and Galerie Marciano Contemporary in Paris. His work is represented in important public and private collections worldwide.
Through his exploration of light, perception, and cultural interconnectedness, Bill Claps continues to create works that bridge tradition and innovation, inviting viewers to experience nature as a dynamic and ever-changing source of meaning and wonder.