Featured Artist Carol Ladewig

Artist Carol Ladewig presents work from her Year in Color series, focused on the concept of time and its passage. To view more of her art, visit her website.

 

 

I grew up in Southern California in a small town and at my grandparent’s desert home. The quality of light, the colors and the textures of the still undeveloped desert around our town and my grandparents’ home influenced my sense of materials, color and form. After attending community college, I moved to the Bay Area to enroll at UC Berkeley. Later I earned my MFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA). During this time, I made Oakland my home.

 

 

My mother, an artist and a single working parent, found time to paint while I was growing up. Her favorite book was Masterpieces of the World, which I keep in my studio. The paintings range from the Renaissance to the 1950s. The book’s images, for me, illustrate the range of painting’s power and possibilities.

 

 

I have drawn and painted since I was very young. Along with painting, I have worked in a small tire retread factory, been a file clerk, an interior design intern, the co-founder of a non-profit art gallery, a college teacher, a curator and a gallery director. I am married and have a grown-up daughter.

 

 

I returned to graduate school when my daughter was four years old. I have always found the time to paint and draw around jobs and family. Ultimately became a full-time painter working in Oakland and Western Massachusetts.

 

 

I draw from a variety of sources, including books, music, artwork, conversations, and my deep sense of curiosity when creating my paintings. The process of painting involves moments of uncertainty, trust and surprise. The themes of memory, the passage of time and the interplay of chance and intention are constants in my work.

 

 

In graduate school, I began a daily drawing practice. I placed each image on the wall of my studio, creating a visual diary of my thoughts during that year. During this process, I became interested in how the separate drawings came to relate one to another—the meanings evolved and shifted to create a whole from disparate parts. This practice of combining images, forms and materials is part of my working process.

 

 

The series Year in Color, begun in 2011, renders the abstract concept of time and its measurement into visual and literal form through the medium of color, line and shape.

 

 

Each year is composed of small individual paintings. In these small paintings, which represent either an individual day or week, I translate a day’s personal experiences and moods into a single color.

 

 

This color is combined with a neutral tone according to universal patterns such as the percentage of the moon that was in shadow on that date.

 

 

The color is created with a primary palette of reds, blues, yellows and white. Each day begins with the previous day’s color. The small individual paintings vary in depth in response to whether the day felt important. This series continues to change its structure as I research different ways of thinking about and tracking time.

 

Artist Carol Ladewig invites you to follow her on Instagram.

 

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