Welcome to my art.
Please check out my personal website:
www.carolyndoe.com
I am self taught which only means I just played until I figured something out. My ongoing education in art takes place thru my own passion and pleasure in the exploration of creative processes.
Always excited by fiberarts and having been raised by a seamstress, I started working in batik on silk fabric over thirty years ago. Batik has become my voice. When dye touches silk fabric it spreads like crazy. The wax creates a boundary. It is this dance of control/no control that captivates me for hours. Through this ethereal quality, I try to convey the essence of a place and of the creatures who dwell there.
SIx years ago I took a class on palette knife painting in oils. Thick textures and vibrant colors. A whole new world is now revealing itself to me thru this medium.
In my most recent work I am combining my two favorite mediums: silk fabric and oils. I have been exploring a fairly new process on fabric called Eco-printing. This involves the use of natural dyes; local leaves of rose, eucalyptus, smoke bush, maple, and others; along with the minerals iron and copper. Steaming extracts pigments and tannins from the leaves and prints them on the silk. I then glue the silk to canvas using an acrylic medium. I create sky and trees with palette knives and oil. When dry it is protected with varnish.
My inspiration comes mostly from the natural landscape that surrounds me at whatever place I am traveling through, working in, or residing at. My work as a field camp manager and cook around the state of Alaska allowed me to experience wonderful, wild and remote places. I have been as far south as Antarctica as well. Like the cold, the beauty of Antarcticaʼs changing light cuts deep to the bone.
Hours spent observing, then I go indoors and create. I like the movement of birds. So they come and go in my paintings.
And the stillness of trees. There is enough inspiration for me to last several lifetimes.
I currently have work in galleries and private collections all over the US, as well as in several countries around the world, including Antarctica.
Carolyn Doe
Carolyn Doe joined Pixels.com Licensing on November 1st, 2010.
