Carolyn Capps
The Ocean: Vastly Empty, Infinitely Full

The Ocean: Vastly Empty and Infinitely Full, a new series of paintings, by Carolyn Capps is best conceived of as a portrait of the ocean. Not just a portrait of sunny beaches and fish swimming among colorful corals but an expansive web of symbiotic relationships, complex needs, competing interests and endless tales of time, change, ingenuity and hard luck.

To truly understand a subject one must follow all threads leading out and examine how those threads relate to one another. It’s tempting to recoil from what seems like chaos and begin to organize, but isn’t there something more honest-less diluted in the full force of complexity? We are, for better or worse, sea creatures of a sort. It affects our economy, politics and environment. It looms large in our stories, our scientific curiosity and our physical and emotional needs.

Our lives, even those living far from a shore, are intricately entwined with the ocean web. In many ways we have abused our relationship with the ocean - overfishing, carbon emissions, oil spills… but there is also an underlying visceral quality to that relationship. The sea draws us to its shores. It is a source of solace to many. That solace comes from the sea’s ability to pull us, as it does its own ocean spray, back to completeness - reminding us we are part of a much larger whole.

Carolyn Capps, The Upwelling (details), Acrylic

About Carolyn Capps in her own words,

“I grew up with parents who were eclectic - my father’s interests included rock and fossil hunting, poetry writing, mountain music, gardening, and wood carving. My mother was into painting, art history, sewing, and doll collecting. We children were pulled into their interests and so I spent many childhood days thigh high in creeks sifting for fossils, combing flea markets for treasures or leafing through art history books while my mother painted nearby. My parents, who grew up in Black Mountain, North Carolina, had been  influenced in their thinking by the Black Mountain College which was both eclectic and eccentric especially by the standards of the time. All these activities our parents provided taught me and my siblings to find beauty in the unexpected. 

I had thought I might like to be an archaeologist or paleontologist but when my  family moved back to Black Mountain when I was a teenager I began to gravitate towards the arts- first as a dancer and then as a visual artist. I attended high school at The North Carolina School of the Arts where I met my husband, Darryl Brown. I continued my studies with a BFA from East Carolina University and an MFA from The University of Georgia. Along with raising two wonderful children I have spent the last thirty years making and teaching art.”