The Carnival Queen Painting

“Carolyn Weltman is an expressive figurative artist whose work includes female, male, transgender and transitioning subjects. Carolyn's raw, sensual style takes subjects drawn from life, embracing both their power and their vulnerability. Carolyn's work is full of wonder…" Carolyn, a British expatriate, lives and works in New York City where she fills her days happily painting, writing poetry, researching the exciting and ever changing politics of gender and sexual bias, watching basketball and taking as many trips to the beach as possible. Movement, whether or not it is portrayed, has become a central element in my work. The characters in my paintings and drawings are powerful and only made more so for enduring how I have portrayed them. I am fascinated by the dynamics and the erotic fluidity of movement. The exquisitely contained energy and absolute stillness of the movement within a body which might be captured in bondage. Compare this to the powerfully controlled flight of the trapeze artist, dancers in the air. Compare it to the perfect timing of motion and the disciplined energy of the dancer or athlete. The primal body urge of a fallen boxer and the tautness of muscles waiting to attack and the velocity of that attack. The movement of athletes and dancers are closest to nature’s animals in the wild. My intent is to bring you with me on my journey. Although I am not married to any categories, schools or aesthetic principles, the thought of which I find anti-evolutionary, I am fond of looking to Velasquez and Van Gogh in painting, and, not surprisingly, Leonardo da Vinci for drawing. .