Bongo Painting

Carol's art career actually began when she was about four years old. Her family and teachers strongly encouraged her to do what she always knew she wanted to do anyway: become a professional artist. Attending the Dayton Art Institute on scholarship since grade school, Carol eventually received a scholarship in her senior year of high school to Washington University in St. Louis. There she was fortunate enough to have excellent instruction and learning opportunities which provided her with a solid, well-rounded foundation in drawing and design. Most of her painting teachers were expressionistic, post-modern, and abstract. While she learned something from all of them, Carol freely admits to skipping some classes to find refuge nearby at the famous St. Louis Zoo, observing, studying and drawing the animals. Although she hadn't considered painting wildlife as a career back then, she was fascinated with the wildlife and spent many hours sketching there. For Carol, a workday can easily consist of rising before sunrise to climb above timberline in the Rocky Mountains where she can connect with a group of mountain goats getting a drink at a small lake before taking off for the day. With the proper behavior toward the herd's matriarch she can travel with them for the morning. As a wildlife artist she believes that field trips are essential for depicting nature's creatures honestly and accurately. "Very early on in my career I took pictures and sketched some wild animals at an animal rescue center. I used one of the cougars for a painting and displayed it at a GAME COIN show in Las Vegas one year. An avid hunter came up to me and gently explained that the cougar I had painted was not a wild animal, but a 'zoo animal,' which no knowledgeable hunter would want hanging on his wall. He could tell by the way the skin was hanging from the stomach of the cougar - a cat captured and fed regularly has a different shape and stretch of skin than one who is on his own to gorge when he's lucky enough to snag a good meal, and go real hungry between! I learned very quickly to do more research, get out in the wild, and become more observant.