Carol Nelson Ceres

Visual Artist

Mediums:

Oils, pastels, charcoal, graphite, pen and ink, watercolor, acrylic resin.

Themes:

Mostly figurative, symbolic, surreal but sometimes investigates color, tone and composition through pure abstraction alone.

About:

Carol Nelson Ceres grew up in Madison, Wisconsin where she won the ribbon for "Best Drawer" in the sixth grade, in fierce competition with children several years older than her. It was in this idyllic hamlet that she survived being run over, no less than three times, by a Buick Station Wagon.

After learning how to walk again, she went on to high school and was lucky enough to get the opportunity to study art history in Italy, France and England with the American Institute for Foreign Study. Upon return, she contracted Scarlet Fever from an extra, unwashed pair of Army fatigues her brother had so generously sent to her from Camp Pendelton while he was away, at Boot Camp training to be a Marine. The Dadaists, Pere Ubu and Edward Gorey provided much entertaining support for Ceres during this time.

She attended The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and, despite "practically" setting the building on fire during an emotionally dense peice of performance Art titled "No Man Is An Island", focused in painting and drawing and was less focused in film history. 

An avid cyclist, Ceres collected over 44 stiches in various places on her skull  from being run over or hit (and run over) by a variety of motorized vehicles. Francis Bacon, Leon Golub, Karl Wiirsom, Ed Pashke and Max Beckmann provided moral support for Ceres during this time period.

En route to San Francisco at a pit-stop in St. Louis, Ceres was lucky to watch the Loma Prieta earthquake on TV which, strange by midwestern terms, pre-empted the 1989 World Baseball Series.

Arriving in San Francisco, she was suprized to learn that the men whose convertible saab she was delivering, had survived, were very nice and had a very sweet, sadly enormous basset hound.

As a nuevo Californian, Ceres has endured one poisonous spiderbite, resulting in a very large, jagged scar and (much later) has received three styes in the same damn eye?!

Ceres shows work regularly at City Art Gallery in San Francisco and is keeping her fingers crossed to be at the Russian River during "the next big one."