Artists Choose their Favorites: Carol Marine

Carol Marine's ability to focus on the essentials is inspiring, and ever so much harder to pull off than it looks. Her paintings have a dynamic sense of color and design, and portray an attitude of true joie de vivre.

Carol has selected two of her favorite paintings from 2013:

 Sardines and One Tomato  oil on gessobord  6"x6"  2013

This painting represents a conquering of fears for me. I had wanted to paint fish for a long time, ever since I saw a painting of them in one of the first art books I ever owned. Fish (with eyeballs – because that’s what makes them SO cool!) seemed hard to come by, so I put it off for years. In October of last year my friend Brenda came to visit and I mentioned all this. She said, “I’ve always wanted to paint fish too – let’s do it!” We ended up visiting three stores, and were just about to give up when we found these little guys. They ended up stinking up my studio, but it was completely worth it, and we had a great time painting them!

Casual Corner  oil on gessobord  8"x8"  2013

I took the photo for this painting in San Francisco near Union street. I’ve painted lots of people but never have the shapes of them come together to effortlessly. People are hard to paint! Which is why I am especially proud of this one. My goal in general for this next year is to paint more people.

You can see more of Carol Marine's work at her blog and her website. Also be sure to check out her "favorites" post from last year.

The current theme is Artists Who Blog- Favorites of 2013. Chosen artists have sent in one or two of their favorite paintings from 2013, along with some words about the creation of the work, or about general new directions and goals. There will be a fresh post each day for twenty five days, so check back often.