Fine Art Paintings

I started painting at eight or nine using house painters tinting colors on canvas stretched over cigar box lids. At ten I received a real box of artist's colors brushes palette and canvas boards. I began with still life and landscape but in time started to work with the human figure. At seventeen I started working from a live model at the School of the Worcester Art Museum, and later at Yale's School of Fine Arts.

Over the first three years we drew and painted the human figure in great detail. I believe it is the basis of my ability to depict any image that I can conjure up. My year in Italy gave me a perspective on the past through the Etruscans, Romans and Early Christian Liturgical imagery. Work with color in Albers' Interaction of Color course opened a whole new way of thinking and DiKooning urged me to become freer.

My interest in mural painting occupied the first 10 years after leaving school. The easel paintings of mythological subjects began in the 60s and landscape painting in the 70s and 80s. A return to abstract work and tapestry weaving began in the 70s and has continued to the present.

I work in acrylic now rather than oil as I can live and work in a fume free environment. It is versatile and fast; no long waits for glazes to dry and the results are washable!

Oil Paintings

Watercolor Paintings

Acrylic Paintings

Landscapes

Portraits

Biblical Works

Berkshire View
{Massachusetts near Williamstown}

This is a view of the Berkshires and it was at a time of year when we were getting into late fall, so it is all of the flowers and plants that were blooming at the time. The view is a combination of a couple of views. I did a lot of sketches and put them together to create the painting. The painting is done in a somewhat different mode from my previous paintings, in that I am beginning to apply the paint in much smaller pieces. It is not quite pointillism but certainly the brushwork is very evident in them especially as you get closer to the image. Instead of spreading the paint out over large areas, I put the paint on in almost a staccato way. Although it is based on reality, there is a sense of un-reality to it also.

Berkshire View by E. Thor Carlson

Clown and Rabbit

This is a painting I did in my last year at Yale when I was working with Willem de Kooning who, of course, today is one of the most famous painters of his period. At the time, he was just beginning to have fame and Yale had invited him to come teach at the arts school. I had never seen his work and, all of the time I worked with him I did not see his work, so anything we did together was through word-of-mouth. He was after me to try to loosen up and start using the palette knife instead of always depending on brushes, so this is a piece where I had compromised, partially realistic and partially abstract.