Featured Artist: Carol Bolsey
Carol Bolsey's artwork centers on nature in highly simplified landscapes interpreted through abstracted qualities of light, space, gesture, and scale. The artist is known for the dynamic energy and painterly expressiveness of her work. Thank you to Carol for sharing a selection of her artwork with us. The images below were inspired by the Charles River.
Kayaking above Watertown, 2010
Longfellow Bridge from Memorial Drive, 2010
Spring at the Lagoon, 2011
Spring by MIT, 2011
New Boats, 2010
Glimpses of the Charles
The Charles River makes Boston and Cambridge what they are: great cities.
When Renata von Tscharner asked me for a painting for her office at the Charles River Conservancy, I tried in every way to find an image of the Charles that would do justice to its character, its range of qualities, its grandeur. I found that no single image answered. Every hundred yards the Charles changes---the banks, the bridges, the movement of water, and the atmosphere change and shift; the river is a different place at each turning, each spot with its own rapport with the buildings and nature around it. No single statement could encompass it.
So I decided to paint the river in glimpses---moments along its length which were characteristic, individual, and special, which would capture a mood, a moment.
I’ve found that people recognize each glimpse immediately. Even when it is just a fragment of water and bank, or a bridge detail, people who know the Charles can identify each one with ease. Each of us has a special sense, a memory of each stretch of this lovely river.
Most of the glimpses are painted on paper mounted on canvas, some with multiple sections of paper, recalling the multiple-panel nature of the piece as a whole. By means of a simple cleat on which to hang each piece, the whole wall can easily be rearranged.
While my work is usually quite large—3 to 15 feet in size---I worked at a small scale so each glimpse could be hung alongside any other---twenty in all—and could form a montage together. They might be chosen and arranged by season, by color, by content, by mood; at will, and on a whim.
Carole Bolsey
November 28, 2011
To view more of Carol's work, visit www.carolbolsey.com.