Jaipur Boxes
You can see Carol’s work at Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art: The Summer Invitational. The exhibition will be open from June 2nd – August 19th, 2017.
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art is located in the heart of the Crossroads Arts District of Kansas City, Missouri. The gallery is on the first floor of the historic Opie Brush Building.
Anemones
The Butler Institute of American Art has chosen Carol’s painting, Anemones (2017 oil on paper on panel 22″ x 24″) for inclusion in its 81st National Midyear Exhibition. The 81st National Midyear Exhibition presents two dimensional works by contemporary artists who reside within the 50 United States or its possessions. 900 works of art by over 300 artists from 26 states were entered for consideration. Of these, 83 works of art were selected.
The exhibition will be held from July 9th to August 20th, 2017, with the opening reception from 1-3 pm on July 9th. More information
Carol’s latest show was favorably reviewed by Liz Trapp, an art historian, arts writer, and artist. The review, under the heading Discerning Patterns at Hammond Harkins Galleries Places Impeccable Craftsmanship on View
can be found in the Columbus Underground.
“An evocative show of over 30 works examines the relationship between craft and fine art.
Discerning Patterns, an exhibition of Carol Stewart’s paintings and Janice Lessman-Moss’s textile works at Hammond Harkins Galleries, is inspired by the interplay of color, pattern, and impeccable craftsmanship which is present in both artists’ works.
Stewart, a Columbus-based still-life painter, and Lessman-Moss, a professor of Textile Arts at Kent State University, are tethered together by references to domesticity, and yet Discerning Patterns is after something larger than that. This exhibition brings up complex and relevant issues of fine art, a context that Stewart’s paintings would traditionally belong to, versus craft, the context that Lessman-Moss’s textile works would belong to. In recent history, since the 1940s or so, craft has taken a backseat to fine art in the context of the gallery setting. Aside from that, craft is typically analyzed through a varied set of terms that center on functionality and use-value. What sets Discerning Patterns apart is the requirement that the viewer give equal space to each object, and therefore analyze the works through a fixed lens.
Stewart’s paintings, mostly still-life and interior scenes, are tied to representation. There are moments in Stewart’s paintings where her loose brushwork seems to define something else, elements of pattern which aren’t tied to objects at all. Studio Patterns is exemplary of Stewart’s aim. Using oil on paper, mounted on canvas, Stewart achieves a buttery smooth surface to her images. The absorption of the oil into the paper creates evident transparent layers of paint which are often hidden in the medium.
The painting is an interior scene of Stewart’s studio, packed with too many plants, tables with patterned cloths, a textile draped in the background – it’s so busy that your eye doesn’t have a place to rest. This is an important aspect of the work because it is the packed picture plane itself which seems to transform the canvas to an abstract pattern forcing it to depart from observational reality. This reminds me of the French painter, Henri Matisse’s lively interiors of the early 20th century where his very aim was not to let the eye rest.” More
On April 11, 2017, the Ohio Arts Council board announced its Individual Excellence Award recommendations for 2017. Carol was honored to receive an Individual Excellence Award.
Individual Excellence Awards are peer recognition of creative artists for the exceptional merit of a body of their work that advances or exemplifies the discipline and the larger artistic community. Learn more here.
Hammond Harkins Galleries is featuring Carol’s work in a new exhibition – “Discerning Patterns: New works by Carol Stewart and Janice Lessman-Moss.”
The show runs from April 21st until May 28th. The opening reception is scheduled for Friday, April 21st from 5 – 8 pm.
Drop by if you’re in the Columbus area.
641 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio.
ArtPop is a non-profit organization that works with local arts councils and media companies to promote artists, give them a voice, create public street galleries and energize residents’ commutes. Currently, ArtPop is on the streets of 11 cities nationwide.
This year it is coming to Columbus, and Carol has been chosen as one of the five artists on display. Watch for her work on billboards throughout Franklin County.
More information here.
Carol Stewart’s still-life paintings offer a riot of colors and friendly objects including vases, glassware, fruits, flowers and textiles — all assembled as if on a theatrical stage. “Tablescapes,” echoing concepts found in landscape paintings, is the ideal title of her exhibit at the Ohio State University Faculty Club. Some 20 oil paintings are presented in the exhibit by the Bexley artist, who is represented by Hammond Harkins Galleries and maintains a studio at the Milo Arts center. “My studio has a southern exposure, so there’s lots of light,” Stewart said. “I’m interested in color and light and light falling on objects.”
Read A LIving Art by Colleen Leonardi published in Edible Columbus – Summer 2016
Carol Stewart’s still-life paintings offer a riot of colors and friendly objects including vases, glassware, fruits, flowers and textiles – all assembled as if on a theatrical stage.
By Nancy Gilson, Columbus Dispatch
Carol Stewart’s still-life paintings offer a riot of colors and friendly objects including vases, glassware, fruits, flowers and textiles — all assembled as if on a theatrical stage.
“Tablescapes,” echoing concepts found in landscape paintings, is the ideal title of her exhibit at the Ohio State University Faculty Club.
Some 20 oil paintings are presented in the exhibit by the Bexley artist, who is represented by Hammond Harkins Galleries and maintains a studio at the Milo Arts center.
“My studio has a southern exposure, so there’s lots of light,” Stewart said. “I’m interested in color and light and light falling on objects.”
Stewart, a native of Ontario, Canada, moved several years ago from St. Louis to central Ohio with her husband, Paul Goodfellow, a researcher at OSU’s James Comprehensive Cancer Center. Their travels together provide fodder for some of Stewart’s paintings. Textiles from India, for example, are found along with clear glass vases in “Patterns from India,” and Chinese lanterns from San Francisco abound in “Paper Lanterns I.”
Stewart seems fascinated by common but lovely everyday items. She often paints flowers that she has grown outside her studio, as in “Hellebores.”
“Late Afternoon February,” one of her most recent works, focuses on items she unpacked from boxes: pitchers, vases, a salt shaker, dolls, toys and more which, together, acquire a feeling of abstraction because of their dense concentration.
Two works pay tribute to one of her own favorite painters, the deceased Richard Diebenkorn, an abstract expressionist and member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Stewart includes references to his paintings in “Still Life with Diebenkorn” and “Still Life with Diebenkorn and Clementine.”
One of the most beautiful works is “Three Green Pitchers,” a study of pitchers, cups, bowls, lemons and boxes artfully assembled on a table and painted in vivid shades of green, rose and blue.
Stewart’s paintings are exceptionally pleasant to look at, but they are more than pretty. Her composition is careful and imaginative. And her sophistication with color and light might look effortless but is deceptively skillful.
“While not new to painting, Carol Stewart is relatively new to Ohio. For that we should be grateful. Her two works included in this year’s exhibition demonstrate an artist of exceptional skill in both large format painting and small. Bottled Peaches, Blood Orange offers a still-life that is deft, sure-handed, and intimate. The palette is restricted to mostly reds, oranges, and some subdued greens. Conversely, Paper Lanterns is ambitious, sprawling, and kaleidoscopic. While ostensibly about lanterns, this work is just as much about paint and the nearly limitless ways it can be applied to the canvas. The end result is an advanced lesson in color, harmony, scale, repetition, and pattern.” (see full review by Jeff Regensburger here)
by Christopher A. Yates for the Columbus Dispatch
Still-life paintings mix realism with bold harmonies of bright colors
Carol Stewart’s still-life paintings are studies of light, pattern and color.
With decorative extravagance and a sense of play, each piece features numerous cups, vases, fruits and flowers arranged upon brightly colored draperies.
Stewart, born in Canada, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1981 from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario; and her master’s in 2010 from Fontbonne University near St. Louis, where she lived and worked for many years. She recently moved to central Ohio.
Her paintings are over-the-top explorations that mix gesture and realism. Traversing her compositions from cup to cloth to vase, one discovers repeated shapes and surprising color harmonies in objects that are otherwise benign.
Some works are inspired by travel. Patterns From India has a celebratory air in terms of its palette and intensity. By focusing on the transparency of glass, Stewart plays hide-and-seek with viewers. Space seems tenuous as one examines background objects through ones in the foreground.
The polka dots on the drapery in Polka Dot Painting are seen through transparent objects and look like confetti.
Directional light helps order the chaos in Pink Painting.
Stewart is at her best when the energy of her mark envelops her still-life objects in an atmospheric haze. In Two Ranunculus, a green drapery swallows up forms, creating a dreamlike space open to interpretation.
Whether poetic explorations or simple records of daily life, the still life has a long, rich history.
Stewart’s paintings, pleasant and comfortable, are essentially records of experience.