Publications
Book: The Shape of Color
Published in the fall of 2010, The Shape of Color is a collection of recent paintings by Carol Aronson-Shore featuring two New England locations; Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Monhegan Island off the coast of Maine.
Continuing in the tradition of the American Luminist painting, Aronson-Shore’s series of architectural landscapes are characterized by a glowing light. Both settings have provided the artist with compelling views, capturing and defining those provileged moments when light first appears and disappears, creating in these scenes an experience of time, place and memory.
As Kimberly Alexander writes in her essay, “The series offers new glimpses and original concepts to an environment steeped in history, creating fresh perspectives and innovative dialogues – held in balance by color, form and light.”
The Color of Light: Seasons in Portsmouth
In 2015 the Banks Gallery in Portsmouth, NH hosted an exhibit of a collection of Carol’s paintings illustrating pairings of New England scenes through the different seasons.
The pairings can be very striking in their own right: a supple cherry tree against a sunlit stretch of colonial architecture vibrantly pink in spring, indigo-shadowed after the snow has come.
The seasonally paired paintings are never mirror-copies of each other, though. You can glance from one to the other and see the sun or snow appear and disappear on the same wall, railing, or roofline. But while the scene is the same, the paintings diverge.
Viewers studying the seasonal paintings side by side will have the pleasure of discovering the myriad of ways in which the works reveal themselves in relation to each other. The upward reach of a vibrant coral tree in flower sheds light on the sweeping, circular composition in play when the branches are weighted down with powder-blue snow.
Book Cover Art
Author, Katherine Towler, used two of Carol’s paintings for her novels, “Snow Island” and “Evening Ferry.”
The paintings depicted are “Wyeth House at Dusk II” (Evening Ferry book) and “Early Morning Light: Star Island” (Snow Island book).
You can view the full paintings in the Monhegan Island (Wyeth House painting) and Portsmouth (Star Island painting) galleries.
In the Press
Reviews: New Hampshire
Nov/Dec 2010 Issue
“In her exhibition The Shape of Color, Carol Aronson-Shore welcomes viewers to a world of sun-struck houses, brilliant colors, and “magic-time” lighting.
Biennial Hits - And Misses
May 08, 2011 – Boston Globe
“But there’s something about the intensity of the colored light in Carol Aronson-Shore’s shadow-strewn rendering of a huddle of houses that I liked.”
Portsmouth Then and Now...
October 03, 2010 – Joel Brown
In her ‘Groceries,’ the viewer looks out from the shadows into the sunshine. “It’s that strong light and shadows that comes early in the day or late in the day…”
Named Lifetime Fellow
2005
“For me, light is the touchstone metaphor for vision, insight and transformation. It allows me to move from the factual observation of plein-air work to the poetic visualization of an inspired, finished piece.”
The Language of Color
October 24, 2010 – Jeanne McCartin
“The images hung along two large walls are familiar ones to those who walk the grounds of the Strawbery Banke Museum, though perhaps slightly more colorful, moody or haunting than the real thing.”
The Liberation of Color
2010 – Edgar Allen Beem
“The Monhegan paintings…are more naturalistic than the more recent Strawbery Banke paintings, but they are suffused with a rosy glow that romanticizes Maine’s monumental little island community.