Jerry Clapsaddle was born in Hastings, Nebraska in 1941 and was raised on a farm in Iowa. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Drake University in 1964 and a Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University in 1966.He was an Associate Professor of Art Studio in the division of Art and Visual Technologies of the Institute of the Arts at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia until his retirement in 2000.

Clapsaddle taught art studio for 40 years at various institutions including the University of Hawaii, Indiana University, the University of Maryland, the State University College of New York (Oneonta), the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Rhode Island and George Mason University.

A recipient of a Senior Artist’s Fellowship in Painting from the National Endowment for the Arts, Clapsaddle has also been awarded grants or fellowships from the New York State Council on the Arts, the University of Maryland, the State University of New York Research Foundation, the University of Rhode Island and George Mason University.

Clapsaddle’s site-specific projects have received funding from the Maryland State Arts Council, The Virginia Commission for the Arts and from two Art in Public Places Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Reproductions, reviews and articles about Clapsaddle”s work have been published in such national and regional journals as Architecture, Art in America, Artforum, Art News, Art’s Magazine, Museum and Arts, New Art Examiner, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and Washington Review.

Paintings by Clapsaddle have been purchased for the collections of the Chase Manhattan Bank (New York City and Wilmington); The Hyatt Regency Hotels, (Baltimore and Crystal City); The Swiss Banking Corporation (World Trade Center, New York City); The United States Department of State (Embassy in Bolivia); IBM; The Washington Post and Westinghouse Corporation (District of Columbia) and in over thirty additional corporate, governmental, private and public collections.

In 1997 Clapsaddle completed an ambitious and innovative public art commission for the National Trade Center in Toronto, Canada. Unanimously awarded through an international competition of 108 artists from North America and the United Kingdom, this project of nearly 200,000 concrete pavers in a digitally designed, fluidly changing pattern surrounding 3 sides and leading to 11 entrances of the largest exhibition complex in North America, with a budget of $366,000. (Canadian) and over 2 acres in area, is the largest public art work in Canada.

In 2014 a 1979 painting of his was selected for an exhibition at American University in Washington D.C. subtitled, The Best of 4 Decades of Washington D.C. Art.

He now resides on Amelia Island, Florida.