Carolyn Kramer
Westlake Village, CA
Inspired by old growth forests, desert landscapes and west coast beaches, my desire is to share a visually healing meditation on environmental beauty.
MessageCollection: Women As Vessels
Ancient vessels and their myths are juxtaposed against powerful, present day female imagery.
The concept of women as a goddesses, is close to the surface in the “Women As Vessels” series. The issue of female gender in these artworks is insightful, whimsical, powerful and often humorous.
“Women As Vessels” series revisits ancient pottery images and converts these forms into modern day statements. Images of urns and vessels transform into metaphors for the female figure.
Historians have long acknowledge early societies, such as Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, where women were worshiped as goddesses. Over the years, I have made four extensive research trips to the anthropologic sites of Santorini, Greece.
Here, I closely studied ancient museums artifacts, some over 10,000 years old. Exhibited were functioning wine and oil containers some with narrow swan necks flowing out of voluminous clay bodies. Urns contain illustrated details such as women’s breasts and nipples.
These wine containers functioned as metaphors for women who nourished their babies with breast milk to keep them alive. In ancient days, these vessels were a powerful, symbolic metaphor for women as “goddesses.” I have “revisited” this concept to create my “Women As Vessels” series.
“Women As Vessels” is a large body of work created with a variety of mediums, including oil encaustic, acrylics, graphite, gold leaf, lace collage, rubbings and mono-prints. Red lips, jeweled hands and high heeled feet, sprout out of ancient pottery sharing humorous images that is both half women and half vessel.
This successful series has been exhibited widely in both US and Canada and speaks to antiquity and archeology; from ancient days to the powerful, modern woman of today.
As an established contemporary artist, Carolyn Kramer wishes to restore human spirit by extending to viewers a sense of peace, spaciousness and lively energy expressed in her textured, nuanced canvases, gestural drawings and vivid manuscripts.
Carolyn was born in Johnstown, PA, USA, graduated from Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA, Fine Art, Post Grad & Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, B.Sc. Art Education. She has extensive exhibiting and art teaching experiences in both Canada and the US.
Raised in the Pennsylvania countryside, Carolyn has closely observed earth’s formations, a thematic influence in her work. Inspired by living close to Vancouver’s sea walls & Los Angeles’s lakes & mountains, her fine art has been described as soulful and ethereal .
Carolyn’s art is rich with painterly textures, layers of color on color and whimsical washes. Multi-layered paintings, drawings and mono-prints are created using various mediums of interwoven chalk pastels to chunks of vibrant acrylic paints, oil encaustics and delicate, dribbles of gold leaf. Throughout all her art work is a love of color and soulful expression.
Artwork Archive website represents available art from Carolyn Kramer’s three previously curated and successful, exhibited art series and collections, "DynamicDivas", “Feminine Visions” and “Nature Close-Up.”
She is the recipient of recent awards including the Westlake Village Artist’s Guild, Juried Group Show, 2nd Prize, Mix. Media, Westlake, CA, 2019 & the American Heritage Committee, NSDAR, Women in the Arts Recognition Award, 2015. Permanent collections include PDG Dental, EastLake Dental, SD, & Mattel Collection, LA.
Carolyn’s fine art has been described as inspiring & spiritual with a common thread of whimsy and rich textures.wo
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