Dan’s Papers Cover Artist Carol Gold on Local Light & More

North Fork artist Carol Gold reflects on the allure of local light, beautiful beaches and more.

What was the inspiration for this piece?
“The Pumpkin Wagon” was created on a day of plein-air painting sponsored by the East End Arts Council, followed by an auction. I was attracted by the forms, colors and varied textures of what I saw. The painting was purchased at auction by Tom Lennon, after I’d had it photographed. I believe its spatial, three-dimensional quality and effects of light have always been characteristic of my work.

Talk about your art style.
I am very much interested in the draftsmanship of how forms of objects appear, for example, within a landscape. People have said, “I feel I can walk right into your paintings.” I am intrigued by light and love to paint scenes with water, of the North Fork and of Caribbean beaches. These paintings are most likely collected because they share something special between me and the viewer.

Tell us about your artistic process.
It is to see, to react, and to visualize a completed painting. I work primarily on oil landscapes painted upon large Belgian linen canvases that I size and stretch to complement the envisioned work. The process is a lengthy one. My major paintings are all professionally lit and photographed before being shown. Most are available as museum-quality, custom-sized giclees on canvas that I stretch myself. I am fortunate to have had collectors seek out my work.

If you weren’t an artist what would you be doing?
Gardening, boating and building houses, but the first two provide subject matter for my work, and the last gives emphasis to the structure of things, inherent in my paintings.

What inspires you the most?
As a teenager attending a Manhattan special art high school, I became a Saturday museum rat—at the Metropolitan, Brooklyn Museum and the Frick Collection, where I imagined I might live, and admired work by Constable, Ingres and Velazquez. Today I am inspired by monitoring the growth of the work of other artists and sharing studio space with many of them, which we do at our adult community in Boynton Beach, Florida. We have a free, open studio one day a week, our own rotating gallery space and willing volunteer models. Many teachers, over the years have affected both my art and its resulting 30 years of art teaching and supervision. At Pratt Institute’s BS and MFA Programs, Philip Pearlstein and Jacob Lawrence were influential to how I paint. I am inspired today by art advocates such as Kathy O’Dell Hamilton, Water Mill Museum, by Rick Friedman, by Michael Meehan, Good Ground Artists, Paul Dempsey, Southampton Artists Association and by Dan Rattiner, who shows his support and encouragement for local art with his Dan’s Papers cover every week.

See more of Carol Gold’s work at Cowfish and Rumba in Hampton Bays, Rhum in Patchogue, Stony Brook Hospital Cardiac Care Unit and Mattituck-Laurel Library.

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