Meet local artist Carolyn Lavender who is creating enchanting illustrations and paintings of animals, nature, intriguing portraits and collages.
She possesses great skill, a keen eye for detail with a touch of decorative while brilliantly melding together the natural world, animals and the enthralling idea of real versus fake. When asked about her work Lavender stated, “My work has been populated with animals, self-portraits, processed-based abstraction, and appropriation”.
She prefers to work in series with her most recent being the “Portraits series”, “Journal series”, “Animal Pairings series”, “The Woods series” and the “Fictionscape series”. The Journal Series are illustrations and collages done in her private journals and the Woods series literally centers on drawings of events occurring in woods setting. While Animal Pairings series is where she draws an animal object and an animal side by side and lastly her Fictionscape Series is of digital Prints created using Photoshop with images appropriated to mix and match the bodies and heads of various animals.
Lavender is originally from Kent Washington but moved to Phoenix just before college where she currently lived and works. Traditionally trained in the arts, she received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Drawing and Bachelors of Science from Northern Arizona. She received her Masters of Fine Arts from Arizona State University in addition to completing residencies at Skidmore College and Studios Midwest. For over 15 years Lavender has been a high-school art instructor, as well as an adjunct art professor at Phoenix College. She has been an active and vital part of the ever growing Phoenix arts community and was a founding member of the respected artist run collective Eye Lounge.
Lavender’s work is widely collected and in both public and private collections and her artwork has garnered many awards over the years including being named a Contemporary Forum Grant Winner in 2012. Lavender has exhibited work throughout the nation at both galleries and museums including the ASU Art Museum, Eye Lounge, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, the Phoenix Art Museum, Tempe Center for the Arts and the Tucson Museum of Art, just to name a few. Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications both online and in print including Arizona Republic, Java Magazine, Superstition [Review], Phoenix New Times, just to name a few. Currently she has work featured in an incredible 7 person group exhibition titled Connections to the Natural World at the LA Artcore Gallery at The Brewery Annex, Los Angeles, California.
Want to learn more about artist Carolyn Lavender then visit her website http://www.carolynlavender.com. *All images are courtesy and copyright of artist Carolyn Lavender. Portrait of artist painting courtesy and copyright of Randy Luckey.
