Carol Young
The Borderland Between Old and New
“I...thought about the families that had lived there and worked on the land in the past. I started to paint them and soon became aware of their vulnerability. They were being knocked down and replaced with larger and newer buildings. It saddened me... ”
Contemporary artist Carol Young came about her preferred subject matter in an extraordinarily personal way. Growing up, her family had a home on the North Fork of Long Island, New York where Carol spent her summers as a child. The landscape of that place became imprinted on her soul; the lush rolling farmland, the temperamental sea, and, of course, the architecture of old seaside cottages and tumbledown barns. She writes that:
Carol had been painting since an early age, stating that as a child she would paint rocks and sell them to friends and neighbors for a quarter apiece. After studying fine art in college she began a career in graphic design and spent many years as a Senior Creative Director while painting on the side. During that period she began to feel the urge to be the one behind the canvas once again. She finally took up painting professionally and full time in 2013 and hasn't looked back since.
Carol's architectural paintings are made up of abstracted planes of color, the meeting of angles, and the depth of shadow which come together to create a poignant sense of the spirit of a place. Even within the abstraction, there remains a strong identity with history and a weighty emotion to her work exemplified in the strength of color and boldness of line. She paints with the intention that the people who move into the new developments that replace these old structures might hang an image of what once was on their wall. In this way, her work walks on that knifes edge between classic and contemporary, between the new and the old.
Aside from her heartfelt scenes of old buildings, Carol enjoys painting the sea and animals, treating all subjects with an equally bold brush and the same keen eye for emotion. She currently resides in CT where she operates her painting and design studio The Creative Barn.