Jon Claytor is a Maritime-based artist, painter, and writer. He is a co-founder of SappyFest, an independent music and arts festival and was a bartender and co-owner at Thunder & Lightning Ideas Ltd. in Sackville, New Brunswick. Jon is a father to five children and, for him, being a father is the biggest part of being an artist. Jon Claytor's work ranges from oil painting and watercolour to filmmaking, and he recently became a comic-writer. He worked with Ingram Gallery in Toronto and exhibited his paintings in Los Angeles. Jon holds an MFA from York University (2012), attended Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (1991), and holds a BFA Mount Allison University (1998).
Jon is always standing at the edge of a cliff, watching the waterfall plummet down and considering a leap. When he keeps on not leaping, keeps stepping safely onward, across Canada and back and always deeper inward, I go with him. Jon gets totally transparent here, all the way open. Seemingly effortless drawings, gestural and accurate, bring forth the way a friend or an animal really would eye you with an X-ray clarity, articulating the big dire questions in the middle of life. This book is beautiful and real and nail-biting. The heroic little cup of black coffee tells all. - Phil Elverum, The Microphones