(b. 1943)Carol Anthony is a poetic artist who truly lives her art. Each of her words is carefully chosen; each possession carefully placed about her straw bale home. Through solitude and simplicity, Anthony paints images reflective of her own inner light and appreciation for beauty. Carol Anthony and her identical twin sister grew up playing and drawing together. Her father was the Creative Vice President of Young & Rubicam advertising agency and a cartoonist contributor to the New Yorker, Colliers and Punch, and her mother was a singer. Anthony and her twin had an idyllic childhood playing in their apple orchard home in Connecticut. They both started drawing at age two, knowing that they were artists at an early age. When the girls were eleven, their mother was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis. Anthony and her sister cared for their mother for four years until her death. The “Twin Bed Series” recalls this time in Anthony’s life.Anthony then went with her sister to boarding school in Massachusetts, where the girls expanded their horizons. They then attended Rhode Island School of Design together, where Anthony earned her bachelor’s degree. The death of their father in their mid twenties was tragic for Anthony. She traveled in Europe for six months, coming to terms with the pain of losing both parents.Anthony’s sister moved to Mexico City with her husband and started a family, but Anthony always knew that she wanted to remain single and pursue her career as an artist. In the 1970s she became famous for her papier-mache sculptures of cartoon-like figures, a tribute to her father. One such sculpture resides in the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum.
In 1978 Anthony stopped sculpting to focus on paintings without people, still lifes and simple scenes that serve as “inner landscapes”. Light appears unearthly, and fruit is often imperfect and bruised. In 1996 Anthony lost her sister to breast cancer. In her many hours of silent contemplation, Anthony has thought often of life, love and death, all of which are communicated through the metaphor of her paintings. For Anthony, life and art are inseparable, and each simple act is a benediction.
