About Me

My name is Clay Kronke, and I’m an artist, writer, and occasional actor/filmmaker. I grew up in a smudge of a town in south Texas, equidistant from Houston, San Antonio and Austin, but convenient to none of them. Consequently, I had a relatively sheltered upbringing, the only real culture I experienced being that which was brought into our home by my parents. She, a school teacher, and he, a chemical plant foreman, were both good, unassuming, salt-of-the-earth people who were still my doorway into the arts, both developing lifetime passions of their own that broadened both of their characters. It was Mom’s life as a choral singer that would get me into music (I would eventually become a drummer), and it was Dad’s quest to become the next Frank McCarthy/Norman Rockwell that propelled me toward my own artistic career.

I was also a shy, introverted nerd that loved the escape of genre fiction, devouring movies like The Last Starfighter and Star Wars, TV shows like Knight Rider and MacGyver, and book series like Wrinkle in TimeHitchhiker’s Guide and the Myth Adventures. So while Dad loved painting wildlife and cowboys, I loved drawing spaceships and lightsabers. Little surprise then that I spent my college years developing artwork blending organic and synthetic, technical imagery, abstract in concept but realistic in application, and writing about seemingly insignificant characters being plucked out of seclusion and obscurity, thrust into situations and events bigger than anything they’ve ever imagined, to the point that even the artist’s statement for my graduating exhibition for the Bachelor of Fine Arts program was itself a piece of science fiction.