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'Explorations' Of An Artist In a New Land

Nov. 17, 2004 – The 2004-2005 gallery season at Walsh Metal Works Gallery opens December 3rd with a newcomer on the scene: fine artist Carlyle Chaudruc, who shares her "Explorations" of over 35 countries, capturing alternately broad sweeping vistas and intimate details in her unique visualization of each place. Now a resident of St. Croix, Carlyle’s works describe both her exotic travels and her evolving personal vision of her new island home. "Explorations" opens with a reception at 5pm on Friday, December 3rd, 2004 at the Walsh Metal Works Gallery in Peters Rest. The exhibition will be open for two weeks.
Carlyle explains that travel is in her blood. "There’s a legend about travelers in our family." As a child in rural Illinois, she was visually stimulated by the natural world around her but her instincts, along with the inspiration of her grandmother’s 1930s travel diaries, motivated her to explore foreign landscapes. Her educational path afforded her a double degree in art history and economics, followed by a successful executive career in international marketing. Carlyle continued to paint in her limited spare time and while traveling. But her forays as a "vacation painter" led Carlyle to recently make the leap to full-time artist, with a more rugged ideal in mind. "I’d like to take two expeditions a year and create exhibitions based on those journeys." She cites historical scientific expeditions of the past that used painters and artists to document the sights. "I’d like to go to Antarctica and paint!"
Carlyle's collectors in New York and Chicago are familiar with her large watercolors. In her new studio she has found the space to work in oils. Carlyle’s subject matter in this show includes abstracted botanical and nature studies that are either intimate or all-encompassing. Some works have an overt graphic influence: watercolor studies of bent grasses evoke the loose zen of Japanese brushwork, and vibrant oils of enlarged Caribbean fruits reference Georgia O’Keeffe’s sensuous botanicals. Carlyle’s idealized landscapes seem to speak more of her own inner life and focused optimism, with soft washes describing Kenyan savannahs and dreamy, perfect sunsets reflected in glassy Caribbean waters. "A semi-abstracted viewpoint helps create a visual dialogue with the viewer’s imagination. I want my paintings to raise more questions than they resolve in the viewer’s mind."

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