Clair Huffine’s paintings are a study in scale, intimacy, and the sublime.
Clair Huffine paints vivid plein air and cosmic scenes that reflect awe, humor, and a deep sense of place, bridging the intimate and the astronomical.
From desolate roadsides to the unreachable galactic core, her works examine humanity’s relationship with place, both grounded and celestial. Employing acrylics with fluid precision, Huffine captures moments of awe, solitude, and recognition in her plein air and conceptual landscapes. In this selection of recent works, we see three distinct yet connected explorations of nature, perception, and belonging.
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Badlands, Clair Huffine, 2025, acrylic, 12 x 16 in. / 30.48 x 40.64 cm.
In Badlands, Huffine transforms the eroded desert terrain of the American West into a rhythmic, almost musical composition. Painted at sunrise, the work bathes geological forms in lavender, gold, and rose hues, rendering the harsh environment both formidable and dreamlike. The presence of a camouflaged bird in the foreground brings scale into focus and nods to the tension between concealment and exposure in nature. Her brushwork, expressive yet observant, evokes the pulse of a living, ancient land.
Home, Clair Huffine, 2025, acrylic, 36 x 36 in. / 91.44 x 91.44 cm.
With Home, Huffine shifts her gaze from earth to cosmos. A luminous spiral galaxy fills the canvas, with a small location pin icon labeled “home” hovering above a nondescript arm of stars. This wry addition humorously grounds the viewer while simultaneously evoking an existential reckoning, our place in a vast, uncaring universe. Created for an astrobiology conference, the painting seamlessly blends science, irony, and poetry, questioning how we define "home" on a cosmic scale.
Broken Down, Clair Huffine, 2024, acrylic, 10 x 20 in. / 25.4 x 50.8 cm.
Painted on-site while stranded in the California desert, Broken Down is perhaps Huffine’s most immediate and personal work in the set. A rusted-out car leans into a dry, gnarled tree under the open sky. It's a landscape littered with remnants, machines and trees both decaying into the earth. The brushstrokes are raw and brisk, reflecting urgency, discomfort, and humor. In a landscape where human intervention seems both intrusive and transient, the piece becomes a quiet meditation on impermanence and survival.
Through quiet observation and striking color palettes, Clair Huffine balances the poetic with the practical. Whether gazing at galaxies or broken-down machines, her paintings suggest that the ordinary and the infinite are not opposing forces but intimately intertwined. In her hands, the universe becomes personal, and the personal becomes universal.
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Fallen Tree, Clair Huffine, 2025, acrylic, 16 x 12 in. / 40.64 x 30.48 cm.
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