Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Cottone-Kolthoff.
Carol, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I am originally from San Pedro, California. I attended Loyola and California State University Long Beach where I got my BFA and MFA in 1980. After college, I did a lot of part time teaching all over Los Angeles and Orange County. This included the LA County Museum of Art and Orange Coast College.
Then I met my husband, a naval officer. All of my Los Angeles plans went out the window when we got transferred to Monterey, CA. But..not a bad place for an artist! I started working more and more with watercolor and doing a lot of landscape painting since incredible scenery was everywhere! While there, I also taught at Monterey Peninsula College and in Carmel. We were transferred to San Diego, where we now live.
I focused on illustration when my daughter was young and illustrated several books on animals and birds. I have taught at Southwestern College, San Diego City College, and Palomar College. I currently teach painting and illustration with UCSD Extension and privately.
After 9-11, I did an oil painting based on Naval imagery from San Diego’s Fleet Week Parade. One of our San Diego congress women, Susan Davis, saw the work and recommended it to be included in the Naval Art Collection in Washington DC. It is currently in the Office of the Chief of Naval Personnel in the Pentagon.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I have been doing art all my life. I have been working in oil and watercolors for years and happily have a traditional art background in painting and drawing. I have been influenced by artists like Edward Hopper, and the California Regionalists however the imagery of my home town, San Pedro and living in Monterey has shaped my work. I have never lived away from a seaport, so the imagery in San Diego, is a natural fit for me. I love painting the coast, San Diego people, sea animals, historic architecture and even our industry. I also enjoy painting animals like my cats and birds.
I started as an oil painter but taught myself watercolor since it was much easier to take to the beach. Watercolor was and is rarely taught at the college level as a serious medium. I use watercolor much in the way I use oils; that is, I try to achieve a high degree of realism, by using a layering process.
I am currently doing a new series of paintings based on San Pedro. Time and moving away has allowed me the separation I needed to see the town with fresh eyes. It is a working seaport but has a small town and old-world flavor to it. It is very ethnic…Italians, Slavs and Mexicans settled it. I myself am from an old Italian fishing family. Like San Diego, it has a historical and aesthetic aspect to it which I find appealing. The architecture, coastal scenery, and harbor are unescapable and lend themselves perfectly to my work.
Artists face many challenges, but what do you feel is the most pressing among them?
I find that students come to me with a deficit of basic skills like life drawing, basic drawing, and understanding perspective. These are critical skills, even for the most abstract of painters and artists in general, because it trains the eye and the brain to work in concord. I find more and more that students in colleges are not taught these skills and jump to conceptual art way before they are ready. Sure, some of these skills can be obtained by computed aided drawing, but there is nothing like the relationship to the pencil and the brain, to teach these fundamentals.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cottoneart.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarolCottoneKolthoffArt/
Image Credit:
ccottoneart@aol.com
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