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scenes -- some she describes as "cartoony" -- people in different poses, hauling fish, cooking. She pulls up a set of wildly flying figures painted in oils in wild magentas, greens, yellows. "These are the mocko jumbies," she says. "They're chasing out the evil jumbie spirits." Carlson has been described as a representational artist or a figurative one. She is hailed for her luminosity. Just in the past year, she has begun work in mixed media and abstracts. She demurs from defining her style. "Oh golly," she says, "I haven't really changed. The abstracts present a whole new set of challenges. You have to access a different part of your brain, something hard to find for me. I'm learning as I do it. In a way, it helps with my more figurative works, the relationship of shapes." For Carlson, figurative paintings and abstracts are two parts of a whole. "It's very much the same thing, except you have to dig a little deeper," she says. "A market woman is a market woman. The art comes in painting the soul. With the abstracts, you have to try to give that same feeling with forms that aren't necessarily recognizable. It's hard to articulate." She fetches the canvas she is working on. It's a deeply hued abstract in reds, embedded with various textures, with tiny metal cogs in the middle, and stenciled lettering in Latin: "Non tenaes arum totum quod." It means "all that glitters is not gold." "I'm not sure what's going to happen with this," she says. "I love playing with the different materials; the surfaces are fascinating for me. Some days I start with not an idea in my head until I start painting, and it evolves. At a certain point the creative energy takes over. I'm a lot freer now. I learn from the paintings; I'm always learning." Asked about her influences, she says immediately and with a sigh, "Van Gogh, Van Gogh." She also credits Matisse, whose influence you can see in whimsical figures floating in some abstracts hanging at the Mango Tango Gallery. Carlson has exhibited widely and won several awards. For more information, visit her website. [1] Back Talk Share your reaction [2] to this news with other Source readers. Please include headline, your name and city and state/country or island where you reside. Local news Copyright V.I. Source Publications, Inc.
Source URL: http://stthomassource.com/content/news/local-news/2008/05/27/island-expressions-kathycarlson Links: [1] http://www.artbykathycarlson.com/about.php [2] mailto:source@viaccess.net
http://stthomassource.com/print/65568
1/30/2014