Carolyn Cole is an artist for whom painting is a necessity, an outlet for her emotions. Painting acts as a conduit for her energy and passion for life. Cole is obsessed with the act of painting. She took her first painting classes during college and it changed the course of her life completely. She realized that making art would be a difficult life financially, but she was driven. Even during many years of hardship, she continued to make art daily. Nothing stopped her from creating. Now her paintings are collected throughout the world and she has exhibited and been collected by museums and art galleries nationally. Her abstractions play to the senses and the heart. She deploys color, mass, composition, and line to command attention, mesmerize, and draw us into places of her own making. Once there, we are allowed to wander at will. Here, we are left to discover the incidents and clues she leaves behind to tantalize, provoke and intrigue. At first glance, Cole’s works appear to be simply paint on canvas. A longer look reveals that they are composed through a purposeful, multi-phased process that includes collage, painting, and drawing. In her latest series, she builds up the canvas with pages from old art and architecture books. She creates an overall grid of lines and rectangles with these book pages, giving her a painting surface that is both smooth to the touch and rich to the eye. The structure of the final work is already invested in the prepared canvas. The underlying architecture provides the essential dimension, strength and balance to Cole’s work.​