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Carol McLaughlin is a self-taught professional artist, working in watercolor, pastel, bronze, fiber arts and collage. Carol’s art is in a naturalist style with representational themes. She was born in Steamboat Springs Colorado, and after graduating as valedictorian from high school in 1971, she attended Business College in Denver, Colorado. She had no idea that underneath those business skills there lay an artist waiting to express herself.
In 1973, she moved with her farming family to Enterprise Oregon. After receiving a wood burning tool for Christmas, she began her artistic endeavors, but later added the transparency of watercolors. After meeting her husband, Mark Kortnik in 1986, they began their successful career as professional artists. In 1988, they opened their first gallery. After a few moves and name changes, they now own and operate Aspen Grove Gallery in Joseph Oregon, where they display their original paintings, limited edition giclee’ prints, bronze sculptures, and the consignment work of 20 other artists in differing media.
Carol enjoys a variety of subjects such as wild flowers, California quail, song birds, landscapes, northwest petroglyph designs and art based on the ancient cave paintings found in France and Spain. Carol’s popular cave paintings are created using lots of textural medium and expressive watercolor techniques to capture the character of the cave wall art. Carol’s bronze art sculptures are based on those prehistoric drawings of animals such as the bison and horses. The bronze sculptures are unique because they turn a two dimensional prehistoric drawing into a three dimensional figure. Carol also enjoys making bronze pendant jewelry called Spirit Figure pendants, baskets out of natural materials, and collage compositions. The majority of the collages have focused on the life of historic cowgirls.
Carol’s art has been shown at various galleries in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to her gallery representation, she has traveled to shows in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, California, and Montana. A trip to Hells Canyon in 1993 introduced the Carol and Mark to petroglyphs and she was inspired to use them in her art work. In 1996, she was chosen to participate in the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Birds in Art Show. Carol has had articles written about her in 1997 “US ART” and 1998 “INFORM ART” magazines highlighting her as an artist painting petroglyph designs. She and her husband spent several years visiting, researching, and photographing these historic sites to include them in their art work. These paintings depict the literal art from the actual sites in her own creative compositions.
Among other awards she has received was the special Director’s Choice award for her painting “Autumn Leaves” in the Wallowa Valley Festival of the Arts in 1996. The year 2000 brought Carol a “Best of Mixed-Media Collage” first place award. In 2003, she was commissioned to paint the covers of the “Rock Garden Quarterly” a publication of the Rock Garden Society, using her petroglyph figures combined with wildflowers. In June 2004 Carol was awarded a second place ribbon for her original watercolor entitled “Working the Rope”, a cowgirl portrait. Carol was honored to receive another first place ribbon in June 2008 for her original watercolor, “Aspen Grove”.
In December 2010, Carol and her husband Mark were featured in the La Grande Observer newspaper in an article about their art and about Aspen Grove Gallery now being one of the first and longest operating galleries in Joseph since they started their business in 1988. Most recently, Carol was contacted to be interviewed as an artist on the OPB Oregon Art Beat program because of her wide variety of creative skills. Carol will continue to develop her own artistic style in wonderful ways that will always capture the attention of her many collectors old and new. You can also view and buy her artwork on:
aspengrovegallery.com
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