March 22nd Featured Artist: Carolyn Burt

“Versatile” describes Northwest artist, Carolyn Burt.  Her skills include work in a variety of mediums including watercolor, acrylic, ink, photography, and chalk pastels.  Carolyn studied art throughout school and received her B.A. from University of Puget Sound after spending a year studying French at the University of Rennes, France, and attending the Ecole Des Beaux Arts.  She continued her education at U.P.S. receiving her M.Ed. in administration.   She has taught art at all levels of education and after retiring from 24 years in education, fulfilled a dream of opening Proctor Art Gallery and re-entering the world of art after a hiatus.  Over the years, she has won numerous awards and recognition for her work.

Having been born and raised in Washington, Carolyn is inspired by the beauty of nature as well as the local architecture of the area.  Her renderings of buildings in and around Tacoma have a freeness and freshness, instead of the rigidness of contrived mechanical architectural drawing.  She incorporates tessellation patterns into her ink drawings and paintings that morph into realistic images. Often her paintings focus on lighting, textures, and patterns that create a mood or tell a story.  Visiting vintage car shows and the Le May Car Museum inspired her creations called “slices of history,”  paintings of cars, but focusing only on a part with its lines, angles, and reflections.

Photography is a recent addition to her repertoire.  She has already won a purchase award from Multicare Health Systems and an award at the Washington State Photographer’s Exhibition at the Puyallup Fair.  Carolyn uses her art background and knowledge of composition, color, texture, pattern in choosing and shooting her subjects.

A fairly new medium is chalk pastel.  Along with drawing landscapes, she has already been commissioned to do several pet portraits. However, her newest addition is that of Scratchboard Engraving.  Boards are prepared with a layer of white china clay covered with India ink.  Engraving tools are used to remove the black ink for the white to come through.  It is reminiscent of the scrimshaw engravings.

 

Carolyn believes “Art feeds the soul” and that mankind is born to create.  It is overcoming the fear of what someone else will think of your work and fear of rejection that is the difficult part of process.

Her work may be seen at Proctor Art Gallery and on line at CarolynBurtStudio.com.