Artospective: Butterflies and Flowers by Carin Gerard.

"Sweet Attraction" 40" x 40”

An Interview with Carin Gerard.

Who and where are you from?

My name is Carin Gerard and I am from California, United States.

How you got into this?

My mother was an artist who specialized in landscape and portrait with a modern twist and my father is an architect coming out out the Joseph Eichler movement and he worked with Steven Ehrlich in Venice, California.

What is your driving force?

I am drawn to my canvas daily because it is the one element in my life that brings sheer joy and expression. I feel free in my studio as I can close off the noise from the world. I love to paint images oversize because it gives me a sense of intimacy and sensuality. My driving force is my passion to feel the paint move under my brush and see the soft blending that I get with my special mediums, in essence to create something from nothing.

What kind of work you do and why?

I am coming from a Still Life background, but now my work has become more contemporary and modern because I am exploring scale. By this I mean that I am painting much larger than life and although I work from life, I choose my own interpretation of color.

Tell us more about your thought process.

I start by thinking about what is going to make me happy to spend 2 months on. I sketch my ideas in journals first and then start photographing my subject matter over and over untilI find a composition that really excites me. Then I play around with scale and color until I am ready to sketch it on the canvas. I start with an inprimatura, which is the first color that I paint on the canvas…usually a transparent stain. Then I draw on the canvas with a wax crayon so the following layers of oil will not lift off the drawing. I work with glazes and I build up the form with white from the very first layers. I build up many layers of transparent glazes and my whites shift from titanium to flake.