carol odell

by ann trieger

Implements you might not expect in a painter's workspace--toothbrushes, sewing needles, a pizza cutter, and a stack of credit cards--fill tins in Cape Cod artist Carol Odell's orderly Chatham studio. She uses these devices to manipulate paint and create patterns, textures, and layers on her large canvases.

"Anything with an edge or a point can be an artist's tool," says Odell. "You can raid your kitchen cabinet or your medicine chest."

For some 40 years, Odell has created nonrepresentational artwork that beckons each viewer's own interpretation. Her compositions are comprised of simple forms inspired by the colors and elements of nature: a moon in a clear sky, a rock floating in a stream, the wing of a bird walking in a marsh, or the shape of a fish. The forms, often painted in contrasting colors, appear to soar or float on her canvases and are punctuated by the light of open spaces, coaxing drama into her paintings. Common objects that she sees, such as the triangle of a boat's sail or an arc of a window, can also influence the shapes she paints.

"I don't try to represent the natural world, but I am inspired by the natural world," Odell says. "If you sit back and let the color, forms, and textures speak to you, then you can appreciate it at different levels. It's a sensory experience more than a narrative."

Although she was trained as an oil painter, Odell is accomplished in other mediums. She also creates monotypes, a kind of print where she paints onto a Plexiglas plate and transfers the images onto paper with an etching press. Each piece she constructs is unique and cannot be reproduced. She also works in encaustic, an ancient form of painting where colored pigments are added to heated beeswax. After the wax has dried, it can be carved and textured, giving not only color, but also richness and depth to a canvas.

"I'm interested in the physical attributes of these materials. They're very tactile and use a lot of hand manipulation," says the artist.

Odell's studio, with large picture windows that bring in more light in the Cape Cod winter when surrounding trees lose their leaves, is adjacent to her gallery, Odell Studio Gallery. She shares the gallery, in a historic Greek Revival house, with her husband, Tom Odell, a talented jewelry maker and abstract sculptor who works with metals. While her contemporary paintings and prints hang in various rooms, the jewelry Tom makes fills display cases, and his sculptured vases line the shelves. The house is also the artists' residence.

Carol and Tom met at a Cape art festival in the 1970s, where Tom was showing his jewelry, and Carol was displaying the fabrics she was then designing. Although Carol was raised in Maryland, her connections to Cape Cod are deep. She summered in Chatham with her family for many years. The couple settled in the town and set up their gallery there more than 30 years ago.

Odell studied painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and has continued to paint ever since she left school in the 1960s. For some years she worked in commercial design, photography, and textile design. But she started to paint full-time in the 1980s.

Throughout Odell's long career, nonrepresentational art has always been her focus; she says she is drawn to the style because it's not easily understood and arouses a viewer's curiosity. Customers who collect her art have often told her that day to day when they look at her work, they see something different. Before picking up another tool, Odell sums up her work in two short sentences. "You don't know quite what's going on," she says. "It stimulates your wonder."

Carol Odell's work can be seen at the Odell Studio Gallery, 423 Main Street, Chatham, MA, 508-945-3239, www.odellarts.com, and Left Bank Gallery, 25 Commercial Street, Wellfleet, MA, 508-349-9451, www.leftbankgallery.com.

Ann Trieger is a freelance writer who lives in the Boston area.