PUBLICATIONS
Q/A: Carol Salmanson
amNew York, Weekend, August 6-8th, 2004
Carol Salmanson, a popular Brooklyn-based abstract artist, is currently presenting an exhibition of canvas and wood paintings in midtown that she says “tackle the relationship between memory and perception”, titled “Perceptual Architecture Paintings.”
AMNY: What do you mean by the relationship between memory and perception?
CS: The kinds of things we see and learn without realizing that we’re acquiring knowledge. I’m trying to evoke the sensation you have when you have a memory that you don’t believe, but you remember the feelings and the emotions around it.
AMNY: How did you go about creating such large pieces of art?
CS: It took a very long process. The backgrounds were painstakingly applied. I was looking for an evenly applied, smooth surface on the canvas or on the wood. With the canvases, they had a silvery, dark gray background that has a metallic pigment in it. I used a low-volume, high-pressure paint sprayer. With the wood ones, I brushed 12 coats of acrylic gesso and then sanded it down to a very smooth surface.
AMNY: What makes you unique as an abstract artist?
CS: I use a foreground and metallic or reflective pigments to create a three-dimensional space where my images are free to move and vibrate. The space created is artificial, but it’s not fictional. It’s a space lit from without and within. I focus on trying to get to the heart of the matter, as all abstract artists try to do.
AMNY: What do you hope potential audiences will gain from viewing your works?
CS: I hope they find it to be a beautiful experience. I’m most interested in the general public because I feel that we’re now in a period of history when art is speaking to the part of the human spirit that needs to be elevated. We’re in a really horrible time in human history.