Reading & Talk with Abstract Artist and Writer Carolyn Wayland

A quick gestural brushstroke moved to the music at hand, and a color saturated palette are an integral part of Carolyn Wayland’s paintings.  The rest emerges from deep inside, her life experiences, and the esoteric side of life including theosophical and Buddhist studies.

Carolyn’s inspiration comes directly from her passion for nature, her love of reading and her search for the truth.  As a west coast girl she spent many days in nature, first daydreaming in a tree in California, then working and living in river-filled southern and central Oregon, moving to Orcas Island in Washington and back to California where she grew up. Currently, she lives with the color saturated sunsets of Arizona and the majestic coastal redwoods of northern California.

“I have always been in awe of nature’s energy and the beauty all around us.  I also am in awe of the unseen forces that are present in the universe, the energy that all life comes from and is part of. Painting is how I speak my truth.”

While living and teaching in Oregon, she developed her knowledge and skills in art, obtaining a Masters degree in Art Education in orderto teach high school art which she did for 18 years.  “Exposing students to the world of art and to their own creativity was foremost on my mind”, she says.  Before high school art, she taught at a public alternative school where the entire curriculum was based on the arts. In 1994 she was honored with the  “Oregon Art Educator of the Year” award.   When she turned forty she made a pilgrimage to Abique, New Mexico after reading an inspirational biography of Georgia O”Keefe.  “She changed my life; she was an amazing artist and human being.”

In 2002 she and her husband moved to Orcas Island, Washington,  where they spent two years building their dream home and a garden and studio for Carolyn. After that creative endeavor she focused her knowledge and love or art into painting.  “Painting there was such a pleasure.  I had the deer and rabbits for company.”   She took oil painting classes on the island and acrylic painting classes off the island every summer.  “I loved being the student for a change, and I enjoyed banding together with a group of artists who were all deeply inspired by the work of Kandinsky, who himself studied Theosophy.  

This view of the world as interconnected and her Buddhist studies have transformed her work more and more to the idea of art as meditation, both for herself and for the viewer. While color and  energetic brushstroke are both integral to her painting, she attempts to convey concepts and meaning through her work. ”Wayland combines her singles stroke of a paint-loaded brush with a chromatic intensity reminiscent of Emile Nolde” says Gallery and Studio Magazine, New York.

Carolyn’s work is on her website ww.carolynwayland.com and on her Facebook page, carolynwaylandstudio.    She has exhibited at the Monserrat Gallery in New York City, at numerous shows and art studio tours in Arizona and  Washington, and has sold work to various collectors in the west and midwest. Her works was featured in the fall of 2015 on the cover  and interior of “Quest” Magazine.  She is a member of the Tucson Contemporary Arts Society and the Tubac Center for the Arts.

 Her paintings glow with an inner radiance and are a mindscape of thrilling color and vibrancy reflecting both her internal and external experiences.

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