Mediums: Oils, pastels, charcoal, graphite, pen and ink, watercolor, acrylic resin. Themes: Mostly figurative, symbolic, surreal and sometimes investigates color, tone and composition through pure abstraction alone. Biography: Carol Nelson Ceres grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where she won the ribbon for "Best Drawer" in the sixth grade, despite fierce competition with children several years older than her. It was in this idyllic hamlet that she survived being run over, no less than three times, by a Buick Station Wagon. It was during this period that she was thrilled by the work of Michalengelo, Caravaggio, Giotto and the French Impressionists. After learning how to walk again, she went on to high school and was lucky enough to get the opportunity to study art history in Italy, France and England with the American Institute for Foreign Study. Upon return, she contracted Scarlet Fever from an extra, unwashed pair of Army fatigues her brother had so generously sent to her from Camp Pendelton while he was away, at Boot Camp training to be a Marine. The Dadaists, Pere Ubu, Das Blau Riders, Edvard Münch, and Edward Gorey provided much entertainment and support for Ceres during this time. She attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and, despite "practically" setting the building on fire during an emotionally dense piece of Performance Art titled "No Man Is An Island", focused in painting and drawing and was somewhat less focused in film history. Max Beckmann, El Greco, and Rouault, among others, captivated her at this time. An avid cyclist, Ceres has amassed over 44 stitches in various places on her skull from being run over or hit (and run over) by a variety of motorized vehicles. Francis Bacon, Leon Golub, Karl Wiirsom and Ed Pashke provided moral support for Ceres during this time period. (Bacon AND Pashke are counted among one of Ceres' top 30 'friends' on her mySpace page .) En route to San Francisco at a pit-stop in St. Louis, Ceres was lucky to watch the Loma Prieta earthquake on TV which, strange by midwestern terms, pre-empted the 1989 World Baseball Series. Arriving in San Francisco, she was suprized to learn that the men whose convertible saab she was delivering, had survived, were very nice and had a very sweet, sadly enormous basset hound. As a nuevo Californian, Ceres has endured one poisonous spiderbite, resulting in a very large, jagged scar and (much later) endured the existence of three styes, simutaneously, in the same eyeball! Ceres shows work regularly at City Art Gallery in San Francisco and is keeping her fingers crossed to be at the Russian River during "the next big one."
"Bull's Eye" Digital Drawing. © 1998 Carol Nelson Ceres