"I'm a biological Philadelphian who identified as Texan. Always having your lamp full matters. Ergo, I have a youthful, creative, forward-thinking lifestyle. Suddenly, I am the older, wiser one.
Thus, it's amazing what you can do as a 'starving' artist!"
- Carroll, "The composer waving a paintbrush."
SERVICE-LEARNING & PASSION ARE Carroll's HABITS.
At the age of 3½ Carroll began collecting money to support two orphans. Around 2010, two city councilman independently calculated Carroll's charity to have been $21 million at the time. He'd slept on his studio floor, sofas, his water and electricity were shut off when he couldn't pay. Then, it was more sofas, no phone, he slept in his car, and a homeless shelter. It was a lightless dark tunnel! Carroll has transformed the pain of tragedy into ecstatic beauty using color on his heartbreaking journey that just might make you cry. After he won 1st and 2nd at a county art show he never exhibited again. American Watercolorist Magazine (Watercolor Magic) told 10s of thousands of artists and avid collectors living across America how he painted.
Carroll was a hobby artist for 50+ yrs. (1,000 works, 1972-2023).
Spaniard Don Fco. Alcaraz (an orphan) unlocked his artistic gift
and refused money. The event was so rare in the last 500 years
that Dallas Morning News ran multiple feature stories as soon as
Carroll returned. The Dallas Times Herald trumpeted the Spanish
artist's record-setting visit to Dallas, Texas way back in 1977.
Twenty-six years ago (1997-8) the artist had a vision and systematically began mapping out a stipend-based-non-profit concept for high school students desiring a four-year university scholarship. Today (2023) it is termed "Service-learning," thus, reawakening the vision for success in our current reality.
By observation only: No entity or private requests accepted.
Umpteen INSIDER FACTS YOU NEED today:
(Examples of patrons at end of page)
- His representational paintings rarely show hard lines. He uses da Vinci's Sfumato method for realism.
- Carroll paints many, many, many planes of depth.
- Light shifts around Carroll's with galvanizing effect.
- He paints very quickly, often doing 1 painting daily.
- Complementary colors are the artist's vocabulary.
- Violets epitomize Carroll's expressive, vivid style.
- A cardiologist's painting had 60 transparent glazes.
- He often paints straight from tubes of Stradivarian pigments. Carroll works listening to emotional, yet precise, music thus, imbuing his artworks with a symphony of color that is inventive, impactful, Masterful, enjoyable, and simple clarity.
- Mixing British and German paints causes unpredictable, irreproducible nuance. Visceral and cerebral, WATERCOLOR resonates timelessly. Carroll's are richly-layered, transparent, gem-like, stemming from cave paintings, book and scientific illustrations, to field guides (Dürer, Sargent, Homer, van Gogh, Audubon, Klee, Hopper, O'Keeffe, ...).
- WOMEN notice his hands - His fingers make them gasp.
- A RoughRiders painting had 10,000,000 views in 1 month. AND, Santa Fe, an art center and state capitol, paid Carroll to render a scene promoting its golf and city for an afternoon sales pitch in 84 hours. Frisco Style Magazine requested a special 4th of July painting for 100,000 front covers, and facilitated the sale of ≈ $7000 of Carroll's Ode to Joy to help Frisco Rotary Club support local non-profits. Notably, his 11th Grade Art Appreciation teacher, HOF Marine Brigadier General Kessler first urged him to be an artist and took his class to The Barnes Foundation in Merion, PA (Just outside Philadelphia.).
- Carroll keynoted at: Southern Methodist University's chapter of American Association of University Women, University of Chicago Alumni Association, Trammel Crow, and Plano ISD.
" We find Beethoven's Ninth Symphony [Ode to Joy] to be precisely one hour and five minutes long; a fearful period indeed, which puts the muscles and lungs of the band and the patience of the audience to a severe trial ..." (A description of the best known music by every music lover worldwide.) - The Harmonicon, which "hung it up" in 1833, according to The Oregonian,
published September 20, 2008, 4:00 a.m.
- He is a veteran writer and designer of PRODUCT / SERVICE collateral for a broad-brush of clients.
- His favorite client was a civilian two-star at the Pentagon who reported to two US presidents and had 30,000 USAF scientists at Andrews AFB. #2 retired as the Sales and Marketing VP, Western Hemisphere for a huge NYSE oil and gas company. His favorite art patron was 2nd in command at the VA, then director of the National Cemetery System, appointments made by sitting US presidents.
- The #1 salesman in America's preeminent financial company taught him to sell and cultivate superb referrals. Carroll was given annual meeting recognition for sales volume and client satisfaction company. Medical, entrepreneurial, and banking clients cried when he left the business after 3½ years.
Eccentric Schooling: "The Fly-in Fly-out Way"
- He graduated from college with uncounted independent studies, literally flooded ALL of the Bio profs' offices, AND was short of the college's and the department's graduation requirements, but got As in Atmospheric Physics, Descriptive Oceanography, Ecology, and Paleontology. He got a science / engineering Sigma Xi research stipend, and summered on a multi-county National Science Foundation project.
- He dropped out of a Master's after taking all classes, finishing his Thesis - and failing his orals once - THEN, ON THE EXACT SAME DAY he quit a doctoral program in ecology at a different D1 several states to the north; His Master's studies were fully underwritten by an investor-owned statewide utility company. Carroll's doctoral Pine Barrens studies were conducted under a tenure-track Ivy League PhD.
- He was an Academy of Natural Sciences (ANSP) principal investigator specialized in indicator species on five large U.S. Environmental Impact Statements. The Editing Department and the Statistics Department polished his work. The Staff Library maintained his monthly reading habit of 800 scientific journals. Initially, artificial substrates were used to sample river benthic macroinvertebrates.
- THEN, he began a Central state's MBA marketing program with a perfect grade, THEN, another MBA mid-semester as #1 in calculus and accounting. He is the grandson of a Harrisburg banker and nephew of a Minneapolis business tycoon!
"It's not artists I most admire, rather, GOATs: Mozart, Beethoven, JS Bach, Vivaldi, Händel, Strauss II, Elgar, Ravel, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Gershwin, Jeremiah Clarke, Pavarotti, Bocelli, Rieu, Aretha, Whitney, Ella, Tiger Woods, MJ, Pre, Roger Federer, Ronaldo, Brady, Coach John Wooden, ... and, Christopher O'Riley!"
- Carroll's #1 magazine was Scientific American when he was a 10 y/o grazing in gray-haired museums and research libraries. He liked the subheads and pictures!
- He began driving farm equipment 10 hours/day - As an 8y/o. He has a longstanding farm boy work ethic.
- He was bitten by the Photography Bug - As an 8 y/o.
- He was an avid philatelist (American postage) - As a 7 y/o.
- He was a farm pond ice skater, Little League Baseball fielder for the Senators and As since he was 5 and 6 y/o (pitcher as an 8y/o). He began playing tennis when knee high to a racket and played Varsity doubles in high school after wrestling JV five years. He belted in Kung Fu, was a lightning fast bicycle sprint specialist, but clocked a sleepy 4:08-mile, 8:56-2-miles, and 31:57-10K (Finished in 22nd as a 30 y/o runner; A college boy won with a 28:30; #11 ran 29:30.), ...
- He was given a compound microscope - He was five.
- He collected, spread, identified, labeled, and pinned insect specimens for his Riker mounts - He was five.
- His mom signed him up as a budding young scientist at ANSP, our oldest natural history museum - He was five.
- Carroll began drawing scientifically when he was 4½ y/o.
- His family stopped its station wagon for him to watch EVERY train. He studied passing landscapes from the top deck of a Vista-Dome - He was a Lionel railroader when he was four.
"Ya don't win a Pulitzer for painting something, all y'all.
OK. Maybe Fco. Goya's 1808 Third of May qualifies."
"The Brazilian Family, who co-founded Flamengo in 1895, arranged my art studies with in Spain, and GEN Tommy Franks, USA, (Ret.), who led a 25-country region, waived his world leader fee to pen the foreword to my first book, Ode to Joy, just because he wanted to help me. His personal introductions included POTUS XLIII. He was presented the President's Medal of Freedom at the White House, was knighted by HRH Queen Elizabeth, II, and was on the National Park Foundation board with David Rockefeller. Then, a numbers guy told me he was putting my 'Throw paint' cowboy painting beside the Picassos on his ranch. Why do geniuses love my 'wild hair' stuff?
I'm the direct descendent of the son of Etienne Burgund, Alsace-Lorraine. Our Palatine patriarch disembarked Lydia in Baltimore, MD in 1740. He resided beside Charles Carroll of Carrollton, my namesake. He was a luxury shoe maker ... I sold the purple thistle drawing that started it all for $100 to get it out of sight 'cause it hindered me. A whiz kid Telecom CEO's bride then bought three, an oil company president (we met at an inspirational seminar in Dallas, Texas) carried his new purchase down the hall to show his billionaire friend who quipped one of his Highland Park buddies just bought three, a golf Tour and US Open winner's mirthful bride called me a 6:15 AM to say that at that very moment her husband was rearranging their furniture around his painting, ... A Dallas multi-billionaire called to coach me. A French Country boulangerie founder suggested finishing touches for my first book, Ode to Joy (2013). AND, I'm from snowball land, Philly (1682), home of the Barnes. I moved to a wealthy market with gushers of loose change. Texas: It's unregulated, unbridled, and bucks noticeably.
Carroll's 1st patron was a quarter horse lover from Argyle, Texas.
His svelte Ohio bride left for the arms of another around 2010 -
Her alluring Jezebel spirit left with her, thanks to God! I repented.
Believe it or not, a happy, enduring marriage tops my life list
of key desires. Husband and wife teams are paramount.
My favorite radio host, Nancy Brunson, said, 'Share the music.'
Life is quite astonishing with my hands wide open."