Contact Information:

Studio - Open or By Appointment 38 Breakneck Road
Bar Harbor Maine 04609
(207) 288-5478

E-mail: carol@rockymann.com

Biography:

I received my degree in Fine Arts from Syracuse University, where I graduated with honors in 1975. Originally from California, where I grew up in the small town of Sunset Beach, I moved to downeast Maine after college and began a career as a contemporary quilt designer and maker. After a decade in this field, I made a move that involved both a geographic and a career change. In 1991, I accepted the position as Art Teacher at Mt. Desert Elementary School here on the island and moved with my family to Hulls Cove, where my husband, potter Rocky Mann, designed and built our present home. In 2001, Rocky built additional studio space and a gallery to showcase his pottery and my paintings.

I paint with Sennelier oil pastels, although I occasionally use acrylic and oil paints in my work. I am interested in painting the elements of the Maine landscape and I depict them with realism or in more stylized and symbolic ways. I paint out-of-doors, directly from nature, or I work in my studio and create compositions that combine the elements of several places I have been along the Maine coast. I strive to work in as direct and fresh a style as possible, to allow the viewer to see the marks and brushstrokes that document the process of each painting.

I am also fascinated by the colors in our natural world and how they interact with each other and with the light around them. The first time I realized that the surface of a small glossy leaf could actually be a pale blue, as it mirrored the sky's color, was a clear and defining moment for me as an artist. I believe we are all Impressionists at heart, eventually stumbling upon a new vision of the world as a mixture of color and reflected light. Painting makes us focus on seeing what is really there (a leaf on a sunlit day is not always green) and makes us observers of our world in the truest sense.

Work in the Davistown Museum Permanent Collection

Lookout Point from Canoe Point 2002 Sennelier oil pastels ~ 12"w X 9 1/4"h

Islands off Northeast Harbor 2000 Sennelier oil pastels ~ 9 1/2"w X 5 1/2"h

Work in the Davistown Museum for Sale

3 Islands 2002 Oil Pastel on paper $325.00

Ocean 2001 Oil Pastel on paper $250.00 (photo w/frame)

Islands & Boats 2003 on paper $125.00

Garden August 2000 Oil Pastel on paper $175.00