Carole Garland

Happy Bathers

2025

Happy times -- nothing more joyful, adventurous or as freeing as jumping into cold lake water on a hot summer's day. Everyone is drenched, shivering, but going back in- one more time. Plugged ears, runny noses, goosebumps and soaked bathing suits - what could be more fun? Hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad and ice cream await the survivors. Another July day at Moon Lake...

A Mother and her Children. A mother clutches her toddler to her breast and grabs her young son as they make for the shoreline to escape the churning Pacific Ocean waters. Are they ru...

A friend of Carole Garland’s suggested she might be so enthusiastic about painting figures and groups of people because of her previous isolation during Covid. In fact, her one wish when it was over was to sit at a sidewalk café anywhere and people watch. But in this work, there is something more. “Thoughts and Prayers” is a reaction to attending a Bingo fundraiser for a Recovery House. Everyone was enjoying themselves at various tables. It was a benign event, except for the specter of mass shootings in innocent, unsuspecting gatherings like this. In the painting, Garland attempts to convey her feelings of dread at an otherwise boisterous occasion. It was happening everywhere, anywhere, all the time. Carole Garland graduated from Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., studied art at the Chicago Art Institute and the University of the Americas in Mexico City. She has worked privately with artists Keith Finch and Ron Pekar, taken numerous workshops and was mentored by David Gallup...

Depicts Carole Garland reveling in a hot summer day at the Venice Beach. Colorful beach umbrellas shield the timid from the burning sun while sunbathers bask in the searing heat. Yellow and blue ribbons floating on the wind celebrate Venice’s chaos and its whimsy. To focus the figure of a preteen who stands sentinel, Garland fades out the foreground sunbather on right and obfuscates the crouching man on left. The artist leads us to the groups of mysterious standing and sitting figures in the shadows and beyond. Garland’s collection of figurative work speaks to a contemporary sensibility in her approach to painting, while expressing a curiosity about the human form and an irrepressible concern for the human spirit. Carole Garland graduated from Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the University of the Americas in Mexico City. She has worked privately with artists Keith Finch and Ron Pekar, taken numerous workshops and was mentored by David Gallup...