John Davis Carroll's paintings of oil and other media are filled with a potpourri of items that keep one occupied, distracted and rattled all at once. The exploration into his paintings and video constructions are steeped in historical anxieties. Their straightforward beauty, however, are as plain as the nose on one's face.
He says, depicting contemporary subject matter with his mind on the past masters is "like having one foot in the past and one in the contemporary..."
New technology also influences the growth of his ideas. "I am interested in making fleeting moments perpetual." Digital video technology has enabled him to explore this aspect of his art.
John is currently designing a series of video constructions involving outrageous Christmas displays that he hopes will be ready for the holiday season. He goes around town taking videos of things that produce movement, sound and light in our environment, holding on to them for a long time before they are implemented.
His video displays incorporate sound along with LED lights. His interest lies in how humans have impacted the landscape both visually and environmentally. One can drive along a highway and suddenly the serenity is punctured by some sort of architectural insult. Images like a smokestack or billboard on a bleak Midwestern landscape show both elements of beauty and ugliness. Incorporating movement and sound add to their permanence and decay. It is this equilibrium in the natural landscape that is upset and his work asks us to examine more closely and pay attention to the "elements of beauty, ugliness, stillness, movement and sound."
A native of New England, his primary experience of the landscape was growing up in an environment that was about sixty percent land and forty percent sky. Moving to the Midwest as an adult, the experience was transposed. Living in Kansas City particularly, he developed an interest in adventuring. In 1996, John and his wife made a self-guided bicycle tour from Kansas City to Seattle, giving him the ultimate experience of "Big Sky." He soon realized that no matter how far one may be from civilization there is always evidence of Man's impact on Earth.
Studying under Leland Bell, John Heliker, Paul Resika and Larry Rivers, John earned an MFA in Painting in 1990 from Parsons, The New School for Design in New York City. He received his BFA in Painting in 1987 from Swain School of Design in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
As for the expansion of his art business, he cites the support and recognition he receives from his work. His art is included in the permanent collection of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, Kansas) and owned by numerous private collections on the East Coast, West Coast and Kansas City region. He has participated in invitationals, including, the 2010 Kansas City Flatfile at H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute and "Black and Blue (Kansas City's Grit and Grace)" at University of South Dakota, Vermillion, curated by Michael Schonhoff. He also participated in Art through Architecture, through the Promotion, Commission and Collaboration Program in Kansas City, Missouri from fall 2009 through the present.
For the 2010-2011 calendar years, John was awarded a Studio Residency through Charlotte Street Foundation's Urban Culture Project (UCP).
Like many artists, John wants more time to make art, enhance overall sales and find more opportunities to show outside Kansas City to broaden his audience. He says an artist has to balance his or her creative freedom with making a living. He goes on to say most established galleries will be interested in exhibiting a balance of profitable and less profitable art. Having grown up with a father who is a professional artist, John is acutely aware of the restrictions that the market can demand.
He notes that we are in more conservative times, creatively, partially because of the tight art market as well as the socio-political atmosphere. This mindset, however, tends to swing like a pendulum every decade or so. A more left-leaning government tends to bring out more conservative art and vice versa.
As 2011 approaches, John hopes to have more collaborative work come out of his UCP Studio. Developing a gallery relationship outside the Kansas City area to expand his audience, John also expects his video constructions to be more prevalent in the coming year.
John is A Fall 2009 Artist INC Fellow.
Visit John Davis Carroll's website.
Written by Blair Schulman, 2010