K.B. Clear paints portraits of people found in archives.  

Painted like film stills from an obscure documentary,

these figures are caught in moments of pause.  

Clear arranges these works in non-linear sequences  

Narrative expectation is suspended 

Identities reimagined 

Subjects undressed and redressed 

Placed under a theatrical lens 

They become characters on a stage, their pose and presence observable  

Fact and fiction collapse into one another as a play unfolds  

Portraiture captures these social performances  

Portraiture captures them off-stage and in-between acts, too  

Clear paints these interplays between documentation and theatre.