About Carolyn Letvin
"Schooled in Flemish Old Master techniques, I have a great respect and admiration for the traditional systems and applications. Currently, I’m using an expanded palette and a bold, active paint application to portray my realities. I experience life, with all its subtleties and intricacies, as a direct, perceptible experience. Therefore, my subjects are what I observe and are all worthy of depiction by virtue of their existence in the world.
The act of art-making is a series of constant surprises – an experience that is always exhilarating and, at times, even magical. Bringing composition, color, surface and light quality together to create a successful image is my continual struggle, challenge and joy.
Why Interiors? I find interior spaces to be engaging and compelling. There’s a “lost in time” sense about the rooms that call to me, which I believe is the essence of their allure for me and others. In the book, “The Poetics of Space,” French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, analyzes domestic spaces and how they shape and hold our dreams and memories. “Houses and rooms; cellars and attics; drawers, chests, and wardrobes; nests and shells; nooks and corners: No space is too vast or too small to be filled by our thoughts and our reveries.” I do all of my interior paintings in the actual space. I like to stretch the definition of plein air by including these works in that category – even though I’m inside, I do usually have windows and doors open. I deal with many of the same hurdles that painting outdoors presents, like changing light and visual editing of the subject. Ultimately, I strive not for the simple recording of the environment but a level of transformation, which, to me, must take place for any work to be good art." -Carolyn Letvin
