The ARTIST Carrollโข aka, The King's Painter
"TODAY. It's more than just a project: it's a purpose. Watercolor paintings not just to heal the soul, but to heal a specific group with a medium just as powerful as the purpose itself. I am uniquely qualified".
Meet at McKinney National Airport (KTKI).
TEXAS TEXT: 214-799-3125 or call
Private showings
LEFT: "YES Sir, I'm the guy with the beard and long hair --- But, you could bounce a quarter on my bunk at sunrise! I cleaned up pretty well. Well, pretty well. My attitude is clean shaven and my mop of hair trimmed".
Richard L. Proenneke wrote, "To look around at what you have accomplished in a day gives a man a good feeling. Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completeness satisfies a man". and "Eight and a half miles can be covered in minutes in a car on an expressway, but what does a man see? What he gains in time he loses in benefit to his body and mInd". and "There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you're going is as good as where you've been". and "When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness"? One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey.
SEE: www.nps.gov/lacl/learn/historyculture/richard-l-proenneke.htm
THE BACKSTORY
Carroll matriculated in the Junior Curator's Club at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia as a 5-year-old, when he was collecting insects and making Riker mounts; He had a compound microscope and chemistry set and a passion for nature walks, bike riding, and a no nonsense yet, lavish, nattily kept lifestyle. His Sigma Xi sponsored Honors Thesis came out of his flooding the offices of all of the Bio professor's offices. He did not satisfy his college's or the Biology Department's required courses. Meanwhile, the Academy of Natural Sciences paid him the equivalent of $250 an hour (2025 money) to do pollution sensitive aquatic insect IDs for environmental impact studies. YES, Carroll graduated with his Class.
He received a Swiss Wild Heerbrugg M5 Stereo Microscope as an early graduation present at Stroud Water Research Center where he worked, Stroud is the preeminent think tank studying river ecosystems, founded in 1967. He chose his college based on the portraits of Nobel Laureates lining the corridors of Nobel Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College. Carroll was a microbio lab tech on C-14 studies of leaf decomposition in a 2nd order Piedmont stream and an aquatic insect taxonomist with Jay Richardson on EPA environmental surveys of insect species, because of their high sensitivity to water pollution. Stroud was Carroll's first job as a college junior and afterward.
"Don't ask if you want an elevator speech. Won't happen. I invested in drawing dissected insect anatomy, where highly detailed accuracy was essential. DYK, 4X0 pens fit naturally in one hand with a beer in this introverted science graduate student's other on Friday nights.
"I was recommended to DuPont by Jay (We did a 24-hour drift study and Dr. Patrick flew down to dine with us. --- I still remember bending a lemon peel over the table candle to flame the phenolics for her delight. DuPont offered to pay for my doctoral studies at UGA if I accepted their offer of a job at their Savannah River National Laboratory; I declined. Instead, I did Master's studies at UGA w/o GREs, saw Dooley's Dogs pound 'Bama in Sanford Stadium and, left to work at ANSP. before finishing. I loved Dr. Hermann's Insect Physiology and Dr. Herbert Ross's Systematic Ecology.
"The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction". - Rachel Carson
"My second 1040 job was Principal Investigator for BP, P&G, Scott Paper, Washington, D.C.'s water and utilities as a staffer in Limnology and Ecology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). Founded in 1812 by businessmen, clergy, scientists, and high society, it's the Western Hemisphere's oldest natural history museum --- Today, ANSP is Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexell University . "Harvard PhD, Invertebrate Section Leader, Limnology and Ecology, Samuel LH Fuller, at the Academy of Natural Sciences hired me over a few brews in the backyard of a hole-in-the-wall Philly restaurant. I told him I wouldn't continue any approved methodologies his former Principal Investigators employed. I replaced the two gentlemen leaving for U Penn grad school. Sam gave me his complete support. I was paid for 35 hrs/wk but worked 90 to 140 hrs. to make every deadline doing projects to my satisfaction.
"The head librarian, Janet Evans, let me thumb through Carl Linnaeus' 1st Ed of Systema Naturae (1758). From a Japanese butterfly publication, I saw how to identify instars 1 to 5 and pupae of juvenile Hydropsychids to species, when the state of the art could only identify 5% of aquatic field collections to species, and taught the new methodology to inner city youth - I find good ideas just poking around and connecting the dots thinking objectively, strategically".
"Now there are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge". -"Doctor Mirabilis" Rogerius Baconus OFM, the four Causes of Error explicated in his Opus Majus, estimated IQ 180 to 197. This quote with a watercolor wash of Roger Bacon from a 1961 Scientific American magazine was tacked above Carroll's desk from the elementary 4th-grade through college.
"Like people, trees are all individuals".
- David Hockney
FOUR SEASONS
Carroll studied trees in winter to paint them in spring, summer, autumn, and winter - All species have distinctive branching and bark. The leaves (Patterns, arrangement, margins and venation) came later. Trees are not a stick with a ball on top. All trees are individually recognizable with common characteristics. Listen to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Light, lines, depth, and perspective are compositional aspects. You can hear the flitting butterflies and the blooming of flowers. Then, trees can be sticks with balls on top in mathematical rhythm and harmony. Every timeless master artist first leaned mastery of the basics: Observation, drawing, and composition without shortcuts. That is, in part, how to paint like a bird sings.
"Those who actualize those half-born visions into artistic productions are those who begin to transform what we do not understand into what we can at least start to see. That is the role of the artist, occupying the vanguard. That is their biological niche. They are the initial civilizing agents". - Jordan B. Peterson
Nevertheless, only chicken shxt artists stylize the eyes. The eyes reveal a deep Truth that cannot be avoided by using shorthand. Carroll paints the eyes last risking the entire painting. Thus, it remains a mystery how he does it. Carroll is a rare, walking, breathing anomaly you can see clearly with perfect vision. ENFJ-A
Vincent van Gogh: "I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove." Ibid: "It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper meaning." Ibid: "If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere." Ibid: "The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right".
"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
"What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again"?
- Rachel Carson
