Paintings on Paper by Carolyn Oberst - as part of the series on arts by GeoBeats.

Hi, I am Carolyn Oberst, and these are four Paintings on Paper. This is some of my most recent work. I had been doing paintings on wood and I am still doing some of those, but I wanted to find a way to work faster and easier so I have switched over to using paper. The inspiration for these pieces are based on two sock dolls, argyle sock dolls from my collection. There is a duck and there is a rabbit pretty much in all of them and I find that the toys represent nostalgia for a simpler, less complicated time, and I tend to take these images and put them in complicated situations, reflecting how life today is different from the past and yet both have elements of being good. Nostalgia for when things were simple, but enjoying the complications of today.

This one is called Argyle Islands, and the toys are out on the islands somewhere. Over the Moon. This one is I Thought I Heard You Calling, and this one is Sock Dolls Embrace, and I feel they all capture this idea of nostalgia for the past but also being excited about what is happening in the present. I have been using oil paints, so in order to use oil on paper, you must gesso the paper first, so all of these are made with oil on gessoed paper. Cutting the shapes and then just gluing them together when it is done. In some instances, they are painted directly on the back piece, and then in some instances, they are painted on these elements and then glued on top.