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CAROLE GILLIN is an award winning artist who has taught art for many years and has exhibited in venues and galleries locally and in Europe. She was born in Santa Monica, and now resides in Simi Valley, Ca.
?The striking quality of her work is the way she expresses color relationships and the the interplay of light, shadow and form into balance with simple harmony.
Carole's painting is about hand, eye, brain and heart. She is passionate about painting and paints in a pure and honest way to capture the essence and the emotion of the moment.
Growing up in Southern California, Gillin discovered an early affinity for art, receiving praise and encouragement from her first-grade teacher.
"I started making figures with arms and legs and five fingers," she said. "She told my mother I had talent.
"When I was about 12, my parents gave me an oil painting set. That is the best thing they could've ever done for me."
She majored in art at UCLA and earned a bachelor's degree in painting from San Jose State.
After graduating from college, she got a provisional teaching credential and worked while she was getting her credential in adult education to teach art. She worked for the Gifted Children's Association and North Hollywood Adult Schools and taught privately.
"About then, I had an interruption with children and a divorce," she said. "I set the art stuff aside for 20 years." She raised three daughters during that time."After they were grown, I went back and started painting again," she said.
She took classes at "Everywoman's Village" in Van Nuys, Ca. in the early 1990s. Her first teacher was Alex Vilumsons.
"He kind of got me started again," she said. "He had a method where he would have you draw, but not perfectly...sometimes you wouldn't even look at your subject matter, and then you filled it in with colors. He taught about shapes and color theory. He made it very easy to get back into it and be successful."
She went on to teach watercolor classes at "Everywoman's Village" herself.
"I kept painting, joined art organizations and got involved in exhibiting and selling," she said.
Through the years, Gillin took workshops with artists including Gerald Brommer, Milford Zornes, Frank Webb, Christopher Schink, Henry Fukahara and Robert Tenenbaum.
She mixes abstraction with realism in many of her paintings.
"But I find myself having an itching to go back to mixed media because it's much freer," she said. "Watercolor is very controlled. ... You can be very free with acrylic. It's very opaque. You can make it look like oil painting, or you can thin it down and it is like aquamedia, more translucent. It never gets as transparent as watercolor."
She might start with an idea, or wait for inspiration.
"Sometimes I sit in front of the canvas, and I just see what evolves," she said. "I typically paint large. it forces me to be loose, which I enjoy more. Other times, I kind of plan it out. I might even do a collage, to work from first."
She started doing collages about the time she went back to painting. Now she often uses pieces of her collages in mixed-media works and sometimes does watercolor paintings from a collage.
Some have a message, while others are just for fun. One mixed-media piece is about global warming. Large paintings of horses illustrate her protest of the slaughter of wild horses in the U.S.
"I like doing people, I like doing landscapes, I like doing collages, I like to do horses and other animals," she said. "Usually, I try to tell a story."
She moved from Agoura to Simi Valley in 1999.
"My sister lived here, and I wanted a house with something I could use as a studio," she said.
She found it. Her spacious studio on the top floor is about 500 square feet and has windows and skylights. There is plenty of room to work, storage space for completed paintings and spots for media supplies.
"I am a real pack rat. I don't throw anything away," she said.
Gillin took up ceramics to spend time with her sister, who loves the medium.
"I found I really love it, too," she said.
She continues to study, taking a ceramics class on Mondays and watercolor on Tuesdays.
"Then I try to work one or two days at home," she said. "Morning is best. If I am really into a painting, I might work all day into the night. I have done that ? everybody goes to bed, and I am still working."
Gillin is a member of the Buenaventura Art Association, Collage Artists of America and Ventura County Arts Council. She is an associate member of the National Watercolor Society and a signature member of Women Painters West. She has won numerous awards and curated shows.