The presence of Mexico in some of Climent's recent paintings has altered and become, in a sense, more conceptional. Several still lifes, Three Cactus Plants and Flowers with Wristwatch , for example, include envelopes edged in green, red, and white, that is, letters sent from home by friends and family. These trompe-l'oeil letters signify their foreign origins, and they recall the faithful transcriptions of two dimensional objects in the work of American nineteenth century painters William Harnett and John Frederick Peto. Climent, like them, constructs her still lifes in shallow spaces, thus accentuating the illusionism of the work and creating an intimacy that further intensifies her work.

Photographs too, are more evident in her current work and also speak to her past, to her legacy. Climent is especially challenged by trying to reproduce photographs in her work, but she has always pushed herself to conquer the formal rules of anatomy, perspective, composition and color. Much of her training was selfimposed: she copied works of art, imitated artists, studied anatomy in books, sketched obsessively, visited museums, experimented with color, and in the end, taught herself these very techniques that were regarded with suspicion by artists of her generation. Her father, also an artist, discouraged her from attending art school, fearing a traditional education would do more harm than good. Thus while the younger Climent is virtually self-taught, her isolation created an anxiety about what she might be missing; by overcoming the technical hurdles, she is now allowed the freedom to reproduce what she sees and express the emotional charge the objects have for her.

Climent's works reverberate with a tension between their emphatic realism and the opacity of their meaning, between knowing they are painted and wanting them to be real, between their anonymity and the implication that their presence is vitally important. Climent thinks of her paintings as "windows on memories" and the viewer never ceases to enjoy the exquisite fissure between perception and comprehension that these paintings arouse.