Full Transcript
my name is deepika ramesh it is april 19 2021 and i am interviewing carrie silver hi jerry hi can you tell us a little bit about where you're from okay well i'm from originally from new york i grew up on long island um i went to school in new york city for fashion institute of technology as a apparel designer where i met my husband then we moved to pennsylvania where i designed bathing suits for a while then we moved to arizona and we moved to pennsylvania so but i've been doing my artwork all through ever since i was a little girl so basically um i
guess the east coast kind of influenced my thinking a little bit so maybe i'm and do more impressionistic i don't do like real photography art if that makes any sense um so i've been all over the country basically so i guess little bits in florence here and there okay and how did you come to the dfw area my husband got a transfer here and so we moved here okay um and how did you become an artist and what does art mean to you well i started doing art when i was very little my mother used to tell the story that i was watching captain kangaroo
one time and they did origami on the show and after they turned off the tv i took a piece of paper and did the origami at three years old oh wow that's what she told me so but i basically been doing art in sixth grade i went to take an art class at hofstra college before it became the university and i've been doing art ever since i'm in high school i majored in academics but i also majored in art i took all the art classes they offered in high school and so i used to do oil paintings years ago when i started having children i
didn't do oils because it's just too messy i started more with watercolor and i do pen and ink pencil block printing i dabble in i've done etchings so i've done kind of across the board and how would you describe your artistic style well basically um it's an impression of what i see so it's more impressionistic with a little realism in it i um i don't try and do exact photo replicas of whatever i'm looking at if that makes any sense if someone gives me a photograph and say can i paint a picture of it it's not going to look like a photograph um i think
my artwork sometimes has more illustrative quality in it and sometimes i do abstract so that's kind of out there too but i like to use uh vibrant colors and i like people to get a feeling some kind of evoke some kind of emotion from whenever they're looking at my artwork um you mentioned a few different media uh which one would you say is the one that you focus on the most and what drop what's drawn you to it the one i focus on the most is the watercolor and then sometimes i do pen and ink with the watercolor um as i said replace when i
i stop doing oils watercolor you can pick up and you can put down and i like the way all the paint flows when you do watercolor it is a challenge because it dries so fast and you really can't erase too much of if you've made a mistake so you have to kind of think ahead and plan what you're doing but i like the effects that you get with the watercolor and um mixing all the colors and and all of that so what can you tell us about your artistic process well if i'm doing depending on what i'm sometimes i say i just have to guess
get some color on paper and then it becomes an abstract so i just i don't pencil anything i just use the paints and just paint other times depending on what i'm doing i'll do a sketch of whatever it is and then i'll start i never paint the same day i do the sketch because i have to come back the next day and look at it with an objective eye and figure out well maybe this should be better or i should do something else someplace else so i always come back the next day and then i'll do a wash of color and i keep building up
the color until it gets to the color that i like and sometimes that could take a couple of days sometimes it could take a couple weeks it depends on what i'm working on and sometimes and i have to be i have to like look at something i said oh i have to paint that i kind of have to be inspired by something if i go see scenery i love painting the beach and the water and the sand and all that stuff um so it just makes me feel good yeah that ties into our next question what themes or ideas do you explore through your art
like i said the beach and the water i like outside i've done a couple of family pictures i have one that i did with my son and my granddaughter walking down when they were um picking apples in an apple orchard every watercolor or that and um so basically whatever catches my fancy i'm kind of open to a lot of different things okay and and do you think judaism influences your work it depends on what i'm doing i did a like a six by four feet mosaic of a torah scroll with the tree of life inside the torah scroll that i donated to that havoring so
i've done that i've done other jewish things and i've done uh bar mitzvah and botanist invitations the artwork for that as well so that would influence big influence for that kind of art yeah um and since the theme of this exhibit is color how would you describe the way you use color in your work um well i try and keep it vibrant so it makes a big impact um i use lots of different colors i don't just stick to black and white i don't think i've ever done unless i've done a pen and ink i don't really do black and white paintings per se um
because in nature there's all kinds of colors so i'm not going to just say i'm going to paint the purple thing i'll add an orange or whatever because it all kinds of goes together anyway so a lot of my colors are more vibrant and more saturated sometimes if that answers your question yeah uh what can you tell us about the work you plan to share at spain okay i haven't decided exactly but one of the pictures i'm going to do it have is more of a abstract it's of the sunset with the wave in the water or i'm going to do i have one of
a beach scene um that i took from a picture that i uh took in galveston where there's a a chair and the beach and the water and it's very peaceful and um looking kind of thinking and the other one i had there was um i live in mckinney and before they fixed the road and were doing some other um buildings there was a little side street that had a whole bunch of old mailboxes that were kind of dilapidated looking and they looked like and some of the mailbox fronts were open some of them were closed and if you looked at them i kind of imagined
that they're standing there talking to each other some had mail on it some didn't but there was just that was the impression that i got from it so i haven't picked a painting the vertical that i did of that so i'm putting that one in it was it's a little different and it's it's kind of amazing we're excited to see it um and our last question you touched upon this a little bit previously but um what is something you want viewers to know or take away from your artwork um i'd like them to have a feeling some evoke some kind of emotion i don't really
do artwork that would make you feel sad and depressed i want you to be happy looking at it and feel good looking at it so that's one thing i hope that people will take away oh that's so nice it makes me feel good not like oh my gosh there's enough going on in the world i don't need to see that in artwork too well thank you so much for your time jerry you're welcome i hope you enjoyed it
