Claudia Schouten Jones is an Oregon-based mixed-media artist whose work is deeply rooted in the landscapes and waterways of the McKenzie River Valley. Although born in San Francisco, California, her artistic identity was shaped after moving to rural Oregon at the age of eleven. Endless afternoons exploring old-growth forests, cold mountain creeks, and the McKenzie River instilled a lifelong connection to the natural world that continues to inform her work.
The river became both teacher and companion. Over many years, Claudia returned tothe same stretch of the McKenzie River, floating its waters hundreds of times while photographing, sketching, and journaling its ever-changing forms. These experiences cultivated an appreciation for nature's cycles of growth, transformation, decay, and renewal, revealing beauty in impermanence and shaping both her perspective on life and her artistic practice.
Raised by a photographer mother and an industrial designer and artist father, creativity has always been a natural language. With formal education in art, graphic design, illustration, photography, and marketing, Claudia brings more than three decades of professional creative experience to her fine art practice. Working from her studio in the southeast hills of Eugene, Oregon, she creates distinctive mixed-media paintings that layer watercolor, acrylic, ink, paper fiber, pearlescent pigments, and resin over wood panels. Her work explores themes of connection, transformation, memory, and resilience, balancing the tangible and the ethereal through luminous surfaces and richly layered textures.
Claudia's paintings have been featured in Professional Artist magazine and SW Hills Living. Her work is held in private collections throughout the United States. For exhibitions and portfolio, visit www.claudiaschoutenjones.com.
Artist Statement
I am fascinated by the human wake - the invisible currents our lives create through every relationship and encounter. Whether enduring or fleeting, each connection leaves
an imprint, altering our direction much like a vessel reshapes the surface of water. These ripples of memory, loss, love, and transformation form the conceptual foundation of my work.
Water serves as both subject and metaphor. Its movement reflects the passage of time, the fluidity of human experience, and the interconnected patterns that bind us to one another and to the natural world. Having spent decades immersed in the landscapes of Oregon's McKenzie River, I continue to draw inspiration from its quiet lessons in resilience, impermanence, and renewal.Each painting begins on a wood panel, allowing the natural grain to become an active participant in the composition. I build luminous surfaces through successive layers of watercolor, acrylic, ink, paper fiber, pearlescent pigments, and resin. Materials shift between transparency and opacity, creating depth that changes with light and invites prolonged viewing. As illumination moves across the surface, new forms emerge, reflecting the evolving nature of memory, relationships, and time itself.
My work exists in the space between realism and impressionism, where landscape becomes emotion and nature becomes a visual language for our shared human experience.
