Ben Clemens
I'm an artist, designer, and illustrator who has been making things for a very long time, struggling to combine art, politics, culture, and art history into some coherent project. I studied painting in college and grad school, and I was lucky enough to spend part of that time on a fellowship in Rome. That city is a palimpsest, with beautiful pieces of art history layered between trash, fragments of other history, laundry, etc. The art of Etruscans, ancient Romans, Renaissance Rome, early Christians, medieval Italy, etc. were my teachers, and I have been processing what I learned there for the last 30 years. I am currently in the middle of two projects: a graphic novel about Rome and how our own modern problems relate to it, and a deck of Tarot cards based on Baroque paintings. I paint everything myself, by hand, with gouache, ink, pencil, Procreate, etc. Thank you for taking a look!
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Unfinished Projects

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Things For Sale

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Framed Tarot Print
Any card from the tarot baroque deck, printed on Red River 88 lb. polar white archival paper, mounted with archival Crecent matboard, and framed in solid oak, finished size 16x25 in.
$120.00
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Tarot Baroque, a tarot deck of baroque masterpieces
79 illustrated cards (all major and minor arcana plus the squirrel). Printed on premium satin-finish stock with a silver-gilt edge. Enclosed in a rigid box. This tarot deck was a labor of love for almost 6 months, a version of tarot that is based on the candy colors of Tiepolo and Baciccio and the dramatic light of Caravaggio, and the yearning in Bernini figures (and many others). I made this deck as a way to reclaim some of these old paintings, and render them in a form that suits them. I made the deck entirely by hand—I drew and painted everything from scratch with pencils and ink and gouache at first, then later in Procreate on my iPad.
$60.00
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Any other questions please contact me!