Yasmin - by KHC - Featured Piece of the Week

Our piece of the week is Yasmin, part of the A-Z male and female figure series by Kristen Hotham Carroll.  Yasmin is a 24" x 36" acrylic on canvas.  We are extending the 10% featured piece of the week discount to Yasmin's companion piece, Brandon if they are purchased as a pair.

All collectors of the A-Z Figure series will also receive a complimentary signed copy of the complete volume of figures book which will be published in early 2012.

Of her figures, Kristen Hotham Carroll says, "I love the fluidity of the human form.  When I paint figures, I do not try to capture accuracy of form, but rather I'm trying to capture a feeling and a flow.  I think some of the greatest, transcendent beauty on this earth can be found in the human form, and it's that essence I'm trying to give life to in my work."

For more information, please email our Fine Arts Consultant, Antonia.

Featured Piece of the Week - A Woman Rooted

Each week, we will be featuring a piece of the week both in our gallery and online as well.  Each featured piece will offer a description of work, as well as the artist's statement about the piece.  In addition, should you choose to acquire the piece during the feature, we will offer a 10% discount.

The piece above is titled A Woman Rooted.  It is the fourth in a well collected series by Chris Hotham Carroll.  As you can see, the roots spell out the phrase "Strength of a Woman."  Trees are a theme in for Chris, and she has this to say about their striking presence in the majority of her body of work:

"I look at a tree and I wonder why it stops growing...  It chooses its own path just like we do.  At what point does it stop growing?  If a tree is in the middle of no where, it won't grow as high and as tall as it would if it were competing for the light, and that amazes me.  I especially like how their branches choose to grow, in whatever direction they want to grow."

This dynamic piece is a mixed media piece, 24" x 36" on canvas.  For more information, please email:  antonia@wetpaintkeywest.com

Thank you for supporting the arts!

The Bonnie Carter Collection

Wet Paint is proud to have the Bonnie Carter Collection on display throughout the summer.  If you are in town, you must see her work in person.  It is breathtaking.  We also have an online gallery of her work on our facebook page:  www.facebook.com/wetpatintgallery

Carter’s collection on display at Wet Paint includes her most recent piece, Coastal View, a stunning 5’ x 3’ painting that upholds her trademark fusion and abstract imagery capturing nature’s vibrant and transcendent beauty.  Coastal View was several months in the making, as Carter enjoyed the winter in Key West.

Carter’s award winning career spans many decades and continents, and her extensive travel across the globe continues to shape her work as an experimental artist.  Her work is consistently represented in both private and corporate collections nationally and internationally.  Most recently, Carter’s work was displayed in the ‘Let There Be Art’ show in the Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA. 

Of her work, Carter comments, “I love color and the tactile qualities of paint, and like to incorporate texture using a variety of tools…I have been privileged to travel extensively, and the memories of what I have seen and experienced have ultimately been translated into these abstract paintings, which I hope convey the joy I feel when I work.”

Lisa Bentley of NYC’s Art Approach had this to say:  “There is something deeply intense and critical in personal sensibilities and modalities of Carter’s beautiful art works and expressions. Carter’s art somehow manages to muse and fuse the classical and the modern, the flat and the defined-it is personal biography meets movement, passion and a very physiological presence. Exhibiting an impeccable instinct for the emotionally evocative power of color, movement, texture, and shape, Carter shines as an artist whose work relates more to a state of mind, mood or feeling than a tangible object. Amidst a sea of art, Bonnie Carter manages to say something very different.”

An interview with Chris Hotham Carroll





1.       What name do you go by as an artist?       

Chris.

2.       What type of medium/s do you most often use?

I use many different mediums in isolation, but I feel mixed media often brings rise to my best work.

3.       How long have you been an artist?              

I have been drawing for as long as I can remember.  I first started painting and sculpting as a teenager.

4.       How long have you been blessed to be a full time artist?   

Although I feel as though I have been committed to my artwork full time for a very long while, I have been working as only an artist for just over a year.

5.       Why do you create?

I create because I must.

6.       What was one of the most memorable pieces you ever created?

How I created Urban Sprawl (see below) is one of my fondest memories.  I first primed a canvas with bright yellow and dull brown paint (not a typical color choice for me), leaving one definitive stripe of yellow stretching vertically across it.  And then I just set it aside.  I wasn’t sure why I had chosen those colors, or why I didn’t blend the final line of yellow, but I decided to just let everything simmer in my head.  Over two months later I finally picked it back up and finished what is today one of my most inspired pieces.  The rest of the creation shot from my brain and out through my fingertips in a frenzy.  Every movement of my paintbrush was confident and calculated.

7.       What was the hardest piece you ever had to part with?

Broken (see below)

8.       What does art mean to you?

It is how I speak.  To me it language in its purest form.  When I witness someone viewing my art and their expression changes; they smile, or their brow furrows, or maybe they even gasp…that is communication through interaction.  No words do that.

9.       What advice do you have for a new artist just getting started?

Be diligent.

10.   Why do you like having your art in Wet Paint Gallery?

Who wouldn’t?

Pieces referenced in our interview with Chris:

Urban Sprawl

Broken