Clara Mairs

Clara Gardner Mairs (; 1878–1963) was an American painter and printmaker. Her prints were included in the publication Fine Prints of the Year during the 1930s.

Background and career Clara Gardner Mairs was born on January 5, 1878, in Hastings, Minnesota to Abigail and Samuel Mairs. Her grandfather, Stephen Gardner, built the first grain mill in Dakota County on the Vermillion River. Her father, Samuel Mairs, died in 1891 and Abigail moved a 13-year-old Clara and her three younger siblings, Sam, Helen, and Agnes to St. Paul, Minnesota. Clara attended the Mount Vernon Junior College and Seminary in Washington D.C. from 1895 to 1897. Mairs then turned her artistic energy towards printmaking before she and Haupers returned to Paris in 1928. She began experimenting with etching techniques and was influenced by Jean Lurçat's gros point panels. Her visits to the zoo inspired tapestries depicting white gibbons and zebras. Beginning in Paris and influenced by her earlier work in textile design, Mairs created colorful five-by-six-foot wall hangings. Mairs' etchings were also included in Fine Prints of the Year in both 1932 and 1938. She was a member of the Minnesota Artists Association. She won awards at the Minnesota State Fair in 1925, 1926, 1931, 1933, 1936, and 1950. Mairs had large solo exhibitions at the Art Center in La Jolla in 1949, and in 1951 she showed a solo exhibition of large-scale paintings at the St. Paul Gallery and School of Art. They lived, worked, and exhibited together until their deaths.

Mairs' early works featured soft-ground etching, a process she often combined with aquatint.

Mairs work has been featured posthumously several times. In the 1970s, her print work was exhibited. In 2007, the Minnesota Museum of American Art featured her in their exhibition In Her Own Right: Minnesota’s First Generation of Women Artists.

Clara and Clem Mairs' also often used a pale color scheme. In Clara and Clem, she uses color and simplified forms to express her artistic humor. In the image, she stares at the viewer blankly, and Haupers mirrors her body language.