Clayton Vaughan (b. 2002) lives and works between Texas and Rhode Island and is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. His work interrogates the concept of identity through the lens of his own subjectivity, simultaneously expressing and subverting his own experiences, feelings, thoughts, existential concerns, and sociopolitical beliefs through methods of indirectness. Many of his paintings feature alter egos that act as masks through which he reflects on the personal while blurring the boundary between self and symbol; other works draw from imagery and memories that elicit a feeling of absurdity within him, and they seek to evoke similar feelings through enigmatic compositions and disruptions in logic.