Contact/Bio/Statement
Contact:
Name: Carolyn Marx
Phone: (917) 324-2862
Email: carolynsplayhouse@yahoo.com
Bio
Education
• Parsons School of Design, NYC
• M.A. Creative Arts, Hunter College, NYC
Special Honors
• 3rd place Award for Breaking Away, “Art of the Soul” Show, Art Center Manatee
• Honorable Mention for Breaking Away, “International Art Competition”, Art Fusion Galleries, St. Petersburg
• Finalist Award for Island Memory, Camelback Gallery
• Featured Artist, “Wrangling Chaos: Carolyn Marx and the Power of Process”, SRQ Magazine, November 2024
Solo Exhibitions and Festivals
• “Landscape Moments”, Artists’ Workroom, NYC
• “Landscape Images”, Frameworks, NYC
• “Landscape Compositions”, Gallery of Gramercy Park, NYC
• 35th Annual St. Armands Circle Art Festival, Sarasota, Fl
Invitational Juried Shows
• “Anything Goes” Show, Art Center Sarasota
• “Annual Member Exhibition”, Art Center Sarasota 2022
• “Annual Member Exhibition”, Art Center Sarasota 2023
• “Euphoria” Show, Art Center Sarasota
• “Where the Heart Grows” Show, Art Center Manatee
• “12 x 12”, International Photography and Digital Art Show, Art Center Manatee
• “Splash of Red” Show, Five Deuces Galleria, St. Petersburg
• Works Invitational, Blue Mountain Gallery, NYC
Group Shows
• AIA/TAI Gallery, NYC
• Le Dock Gallery, Fire Island
• Installation, Florida Cancer Specialists, via Art for Hope, Lakewood Ranch
• Define Gallery, Sarasota
My artworks are also exhibited in private collections throughout the U.S.
Statement:
I am awestruck by ideas – color theory, chaos theory, the intricacies of the human mind, the miracle of nature. I have in fact drawn from nature for many years as a landscape artist, and I often start my mixed media work with drawings to capture the movement of trees, flowers, or other complex living things. I keep this sense of movement going as the work grows.
I find it wondrous that we perceive motion in a work of art which, for all intents and purposes, is static! I am drawn to backlit foliage and enjoy creating my own version of this phenomenon. I am fascinated by composition – and especially, to coin a phrase, ‘barely controlled chaos’. It works, it is balanced, but barely. I am thrilled when the sunlight happens to catch a translucent piece of material which to my eye becomes a dancer in the woods, or when suddenly the blue of the sky reflects on my glass, contrasts with the pigmented colors, and the composition pops!
My current body of work incorporates materials including acrylic paint, gels, plastic wrap, soap bubbles, and water. I paint, layer, scrape, draw, spray and press the pigments and water on or between glass plates. With my camera I work outdoors to create compositions that capture the day's transient atmosphere and lighting effects.
It is always a delightful surprise – I suddenly perceive a relationship, an environment, a narrative, an impossible dream-like space, the sense of a childhood memory, always a world within a world. I love the intuitive aspect of this process, and strive for it to come through in my artwork.
I work at different stages and times of day, sometimes over days and weeks. At some point, I clean off the glass and begin again, so the art materials ---like the ephemeral effects of sunlight---are fleeting.