Born in Philadelphia, PA, Carbone received a BFA at The Philadelphia College of Art (now The University of the Arts). For more than 40 years, he was the Creative Director and Artist-in-Residence for the Carbone Smolan Agency, which he co-founded in New York City in 1977 with designer Leslie Smolan. Their many clients include award-winning assignments for Mandarin Oriental Hotels, Christie’s, Coach, and The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and internationally esteemed art institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, LACMA, The Jewish Museum, The Morgan Library, and The Musée du Louvre. The American Institute of Graphic Arts recognized this body of work with a Lifetime Achievement Award In 2014.
Carbone has taught at the School of Visual Arts and lectured at Yale University, Carnegie Mellon, the Rhode Island School of Design, RIT, and the University of the Arts. He has presented his work at the Cooper Hewitt, The Denver Art Museum, and the High Museum in Atlanta. He has spoken at TEDx about his career in Art and Design and writes about these for PRINT magazine, Fast Company, and Huffington Post. He is the author of the book The Virtuoso: Face to Face with 40 Extraordinary Talents, featuring photographic portraits by Howard Schatz.
He has been an avid composer and guitarist for more than 50 years. His studios are in Piermont, NY, along the Hudson River.
Artist Statement
"I was born in Philadelphia and received my BFA in Graphic Design at The Philadelphia College of Art in 1973.
My work is deeply rooted in drawing, as it offers me the broadest range of artistic expression. I explore the body, portraits, objects, and nature using a wide range of techniques representationally and, most recently, abstractly.
In my latest collection of paintings and drawings titled Silence, non-narrative compositions invite viewers to imagine their own story as they study the image. The interplay of shape and color is open for individual interpretation and quiet introspection offering a respite to the relentless clamor of contemporary narative, existential threats, and political polarization.
For inspiration, I embrace the atmospheric canvases of Mark Rothko, the fiery brush of Joan Mitchell, and the mysterious materiality of Louise Nevelson. My new paintings are simple when viewed from afar and complex when studied closely, resulting in the ideal “simplexity” of image. My shapes are biomorphic, my color impactful, and my surfaces ferocious.
Creating the images for Silence is an artistic journey without a map. The dominant shapes often start with a single brushstroke in the center of the canvas and “grow” outward without a predetermined contour. I frequently rotate the canvas, inviting further experimentation. Using “flakeboard,” a standard construction material as a surface, adds expressive texture and dimension.
The exhilarating moment in this “journey” is when, after much hard work, the painting and I simultaneously arrive at the right destination."
