Art in America: Clay Wagstaff
September 1, 2009 - Elaine Sexton
"Clay Wagstaff embeds his curious and compelling landscapes with self-conscious traces of his process. Exposed grids—lines sketched on the canvas that bleed through the oil paint— materialize in skies over seas, trees and shorelines. Evidence of an order underneath, this overt gesture on one hand telegraphs a desire to control and on the other acknowledges an almostness to Wagstaff’s efforts to replicate nature. “A Natural Order” was this Utah-based artist’s second exhibition at Sears Peyton. Like “Dynamic Symmetry,” his last (2007), its title refers to theories of Leonardo da Vinci concerning laws of natural design."