Selections from Ten Years of Painting
Rhoda Carroll
from THE ANIMORPH SERIES
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The Animorphs all have animal references, but the first paintings in the series (including Crow Mother) were figuratively unintentional and appeared as if by magic. Crow Mother and Herons are watercolor paintings poured on Yupo paper, a product that, unlike normal watercolor paper, resists pigment absorption. The pigments rest on the surface until they dry, and the colors move, blend, granulate, or sediment out depending on their own nature. Thus the product is an exciting combination of shape (planned and executed in plain water) and color (added by drops and shifted with movement of the paper). Catch is acrylic used like watercolor, and it's on a rough cold-press paper.
from PASTELS
Cloud Shadows 31" x 25"
Primordial 25" x 31" (Private collection)
Just Three Bananas 16" x 20" 
Lemons 16" x 20"
Several years ago I began to experiment with the properties of soft pastels (Rembrandt, Schminke, and Yarka, in particular). The layering and blending capacities of these dry pigments are a sensual delight, but I have to manage their toxicity by using them only outdoors in good weather. Cloud Shadows happened during a workshop at the Round Barn in Waitsfield, Vermont, with pastel artist Marilyn Rukesas. Primordial was the first in a series of abstract pastels which developed in response to a PBS program on interstellar travel.
The smaller pastel still lifes reflect an interest in realistic work despite my strong preference for abstractions. Abstract paintings require a felicitous combination of idea, vision, and basic technical competence. When I lack the vision but crave the experience of painting, I am drawn to arrangements of natural objects, and rendering them realistically provides pleasure, rigor, and a nice kind of confirmation of basic skills. For the paintings Just Three Bananas and Lemons I was primarily interested to see if I could use this soft dry medium to indicate reflective glass.
from ABSTRACT WATERCOLORS
These three big noisy paintings were painted wet-in-wet on Arches cold-press papers (or similar papers). I’ll sometimes wash away sections and allow them to dry before overpainting them in a transparent pigment. Some of these activities are very conscious and deliberate. The more familiar I become with the materials, the more these secondary processes become automatic and completely engrossing. Progenitor is the result of the separation and movement of alizarin crimson and Windsor green, watercolor pigments that produce a rich velvety black. The impetus for the painting came from thinking about my vexed relationship with my father. A Certain Amount of Turbulence Each October came as a phrase first (probably a hangover from my years as a poet and fiction writer). Within seconds I was in my studio and making shapes that corresponded to my ideas of the meaning of the title. I made Lilac/Bud very early one spring in an effort to overcome the white of a long winter. This painting won the Artists’ Choice award at the Northern Vermont Artists June Juried Show at the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, Vermont in 2000.
Progenitor 22" x 30" (Private collection)
A Certain Amount of Turbulence
Each October 22" x 30"
Lilac/Bud 30" x 22"
from ACRYLICS
Ghost Towers 34" x 28"
Storm 24" x 36"
I painted “Ghost Towers” one night shortly after September 11, 2001. The events of that day are indelibly etched in our collective and individual memory, and every artist and writer I know had to make something in response (see also Charlotte Hastings' work n this issue). “Ghost Towers” is one of six paintings I made after that terrible day.
These paintings were my first in acrylic, a durable and flexible medium that permits very fast painting and drying when the impetus is to record molten emotion. "Storm" has no climatological reference, although the finished piece does look a bit like bad weather. I was working on another idea entirely, and after long struggle I went over it with some furious swipes of thick acrylic paint and the edge of a palette knife.