Klay-James Enos is a visual artist and curator from New York City. His work puts the direct perception of plein air painting in dialogue with urban exploration, aleatoric constraints, and art history. He bases his artistic practice around an individualistic conception of presence and spontaneity, often allowing new technology to influence his paintings in methodology and subject matter.
Enos grew up in the East Village. He received his B.A. from Alfred University, where he studied English literature and art history. He is largely self-taught as a painter, but has also studied at the Art Students League. Enos has shown his paintings in a a solo exhibit at the Ottendorfer Public Library, in numerous exhibits in New York, and in Toronto and Berlin. He curated an exhibit, “The pane, not the window” at Station Independent Projects in 2017, and designed projections for a production of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s scenic cantata Mahagonny Songspiel at Howl! Happening in the spring of 2018. In 2024, his work was published in Kernel Magazine and he was a guest artist speaker for New Rochelle High School's PAVE arts program. His essays on other artists' work have been featured at NYU's Kimmel Stovall Gallery and Bowdoin College in Maine.