Carol Brown Goldberg

Carol Brown Goldberg is a famous American painter and sculptor known for her optical based art. Goldberg’s work is noted for its use of reflective chips nestled among acrylics on canvas. Mesmerizing and colorful, they are almost hypnotic in nature. Subtle yet bold in style, her work is prolific and instantly recognizable.

Carol Brown Goldberg was born in Baltimore, MD. She moved to the Washington, DC metro area after graduating from University of Maryland with a B.A. in American Studies. She then pursued her studies at the Corcoran School of Art under Gene Davis, where she was awarded the Eugene M. Weisz award upon graduation. In 1989 and 1990, Goldberg produced and curated a 14-part lecture series, “Voices of Our Time,” which explored the relationship between art and science. She has taught at American University and University of Maryland, was Artist in Residence at Chautauqua Institute, and is the recipient of the Maryland State Arts Award.

Goldberg draws much of her inspiration from music, light, geometric pattern, and brightness. When the Vero Beach Museum displayed her work, they described it as such… “Goldberg infuses the surfaces of her canvases with pulverized polymer to intensify her colors and give them an almost Venetian look. Unlike the work of earlier artists whose hard-edged, geometric compositions seem flat and contained, Goldberg’s paintings gather energy and pull viewers into a limitless ‘abstract universe’.

Carol Brown Goldberg’s recent paintings are astral-like, conflating lyrical abstraction with Op Art and hard-edged painting to create portals with a view of some great abyss or boundless space beyond. Influenced by her teachers, mentors and peers of the Washington Color School, her paintings are necessarily about color and the manipulation of paint to create translucent veils and opaque structures that provide definition to the portals and allow a view on to something speeding away or towards us — perhaps a mass being pulled by a vacuum in space or a cosmic explosion with debris hurling toward us. Goldberg maintains a tension in these paintings between their vibrant, energetic and colorful presence and the void and emptiness from floating objects and no recognizable forms that makes them seem mystical and transcendent.

She has shown in the U.S. and internationally in over 100 solo and group exhibitions, including traveling exhibits throughout Spain and Mexico. Her work is included in many museums and private collections, including New Orleans Museum of Art and National Museum for Women in the Arts, as well as outdoor sculpture installations at The Kreeger Museum and The Katzen Arts Center at American University.

Since 1975 Carol has been living and working in Washington, DC.