Caroline Mayer

Caroline Mayer is a painter, Washington, DC area native, and a long-time resident of Frederick, Maryland.

Getting the urge to travel at a young age, she went off to see what was out there in England, Italy, Greece, the American Virgin Islands, Iceland, Wales, Ireland and other places. Images from these locales have long been fodder for paintings. Living in Greece for awhile especially fostered a fascination with water. Water, ever-changing, always moving, so dramatically affected by light and weather, is a challenge to paint and always a bit magic. This is one of Caroline’s favorite subjects.

The form of land itself is also a favorite theme. The weather-sculpted mountains of Greece, an old lava flow, a mountain pass in Ireland, these are all eye-candy for this artist, as you will see as you navigate this site.

Birds in imagined environments is a theme currently being explored. These paintings are expressions of Caroline’s walks in wooded areas and her delight in the birds she sees there. Presenting these creatures in natural habitats didn’t seem to express their essence to her.

“The prospect of painting a bird in its natural surroundings seems so boring to me, but the birds themselves are very exiting. I struggled with this for a long time and then had an epiphany when I saw some hand-printed Nepalese paper that looked like reeds: the pattern on the paper represented nature without trying to be realistic. It was a perfect background to make the birds stand out and not get lost in the branches of a tree.

“This has developed into thinking about the backgrounds of the birds as an interpretation of how the birds themselves might see their surroundings. I have moved on from the paper backgrounds to abstract or stylized backgrounds that I come up with myself. The dots that are often around the birds’ bodies represent the bird’s energy. Sometimes there are marks that represent the bird’s song.”