Clara J. Straight

Clara Straight was born on August 28, 1919. Her family moved to Yarrow, Missouri, outside of Kirksville when she was six weeks old. At age three, she began painting with shoe polish using cereal boxes as a canvas. In 1937, when she was seventeen or eighteen, she submitted a watercolor, Weber Mill, to the Missouri State fair and won first place and received $10 in prize money. She attended Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in the 1940s and graduated with honors.

Clara taught art in Moberly, Missouri at Moberly Junior High School from 1941 to 1945, and Moberly Junior College. Then, she attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, and earned her master’s degree in 1945. Her thesis was a painting title Farm Animal that is on display at the Norlin Library, University of Colorado. After graduating, she became an art instructor at the University of Colorado. In 1948, she moved to Ithaca, New York, and taught in the Design Department at Cornell University for thirty-six years, retiring in 1984. During her sabbaticals she visited several institutions in the United States and travelled to Europe, Mexico, and Australia.

In 1984, she returned to Yarrow, Missouri to live with her brother in their childhood home. She is a prolific artist that paints in watercolor and acrylic depicting landscapes in an impressionist style. In a Rural Missouri article where it talks about how she paints it states “Clara has an uncanny ability to see the big picture, even when she is applying the early brush strokes. “I know exactly how much and where it’s going to set on the page what it is to feel like and the mood is”” (Rural Missouri, July 2018) Her impact on the art community in the Kirksville, Missouri area has been great and the Kirksville Arts Association has also been a big supporter of her artwork.  Hundreds of her works have been sold mostly in the Kirksville, Missouri area, but her works can be found in private collections worldwide.

Clara Straight Interview, July 16, 2025: Clara Straight Interview 7-16-2025.mp4