Press - nice things said about Carole Estrup's Work

PAINTING

FEATURED ARTIST -
Carole's Gallery

Carole Estrup renders multi-cultural subject
matter in a renaissance style. With special
attention to figure and form, she deftly creates
scenes that are visual feasts, with every inch
of canvas drawing your eyes for inspection.

When presenting us with portraits of every
world culture, both past and present, Carole
gives us the best of that culture, the most
beautiful. Some pieces work in comforting
earth tones ... others in rich classic tones to
vividly accent the mood of the painting.

Carole clearly believes there is something
beautiful to see, no matter where you are
in the world. Her paintings let her share that
vision with us.

Chris Jenkins, http://dubiousprofundity.com

CAROLE ESTRUP/
CAROLE'S Gallery & Bookstore

I found this site to be quite breathtaking.
It is a gallery of paintings, yet they contain
more life and movement than I have seen in art
in a long time. As I looked through her gallery,
I felt that this was truly the expression of
herself, her soul. While others express in words,
Estrup communicates powerfully through paintings
in a way that captures my attention completely.
The longer I look at each painting, the more they
seem to become alive, or at least to exude a strong
feeling that is uplifting and hopeful. Whether or
not you would ever want to own such artwork, it is
worth just looking through from time to time to
simply benefit from the energy that is projected.
Helen Labovitch
http://pages.cthome.net/dmastrol

Carole Estrup
"I think your work is indeed extraordinary
and quite unique." Donald Trump

Carole Estrup "The depth of feeling in the faces,
the attention to anatomy and movement all over the
canvas, nearly bursting off the edges, are brimming
with artistic talent and sincere expression."
Jan Jennings, Tribune Art Critic

"Carole Estrup imbues her nudes with a
tenderness that eclipses the blatant, stirring
in the viewer memories of romantic interludes
and admiration for the human body."
Rick Heredia, Californian Staff Writer

SubtleTea.com
"Klimt and the Purity of Death" -
by Fred Jansen
© 2007 Fred Jansen

So Gustav Klimt has become the world’s most sought
after painter. Is anyone surprised?

Consider his time, the turn of the last century.
It was an era of industrial robber barons, failing
royal empires, white and black slavery and social
upheaval. Incredible wealth boiling atop grim poverty,
all of it condoned and encouraged by various religious
factions. Called the Age of Decadence, the artist
himself condemned Europe as a spreading pornography
of crucifixes.

The women he portrayed might have come right out of
case histories compiled by Sigmund Freud. The vast
majority of his upper crust patients suffered para-
lyzing hysteria, the doctor reported, caused by incest
and other brutalities. Or maybe Klimt’s models were
actual corpses, their paleness highlighted by blue
shadows and hues of oxygen starved blood and flesh.
Certainly most of them seemed arrayed in broken,
perverse poses. He encased them in gold leaf robes
or gowns heavy and solid as a sarcophagus. We get a
necrophilian kiss and the promise of much more to
come.

Perhaps Klimt was simply prescient. Did he visualize
the coming century of world-wide butchery? Seer or not
it is possible to see all of that sorrowful history in
Klimt’s work.

So now is the time to look at another painter, one who
uses gold to tell us about the living. She is Carole
Estrup and for many decades she has recorded the vit-
ality of cultures which are our living, but endangered
heritage. From the rain forests and ritual huts of
American natives to the ancient monuments of China
and India, out of our cave homes into the enlightened
imagery of the cosmos, she weaves visual evidence of
a profound, ever tantalizing future.

Her figures are often crowded, interlocked in a dance of
propagation. Examples include "The Seven Continents"
and a socio-political series which includes "Rebirth
of Africa" and "Paradise Lost". Her earlier collection,
called "Evolution of the Soul", was widely acclaimed
and set amidst the stars like deities we imagine
explain the scientific secrets of eternity. More
earthly concepts like "Creation of the Four Winds"
and "Anabasis" show us the natural phenomenon of
energy, of motion and upwelling with egocentric,
human eyes.

Paintings depicting the lone human figure, such as the
mysterious "The Smiling Knight" are not rare, but they
are also adazzle with living and physical spiritual
symbols. "The Swan of Tuonela" takes on the
mythology of death, of a living individual’s accept-
ance of that process. Yet all about every such indivi-
dual life in the plant and animal world goes on, and
most of us happily accept that, too.

Gold, we have believed since early-human times, is a
gift of the sun, of its body and essence. Rather, we
know now, our sun’s gift is light in all of its invis-
ible invaluable energies. Those colors are found on
itself. They are the substance and action with which
all the creatures shout life, living, being! Some find
Estrup’s vision just the right antidote for our recent
steady diet of victimization, betrayal and fear. It might
be named inspiration, resolve, even passion.

All work is copyrighted property of Fred Jansen.
© 2007 SubtleTea Productions All Rights Reserved

WRITING

Praise for Carole's new book,
BAREFOOT GIRL OUT OF OHIO:
A memoir of survival and overcoming

Customer Reviews

iiiii Upsetting Book November 7, 2007
By H. Smoot (CA) -
I have known Carole Estrup, the author, for
about 10 years and have always
considered her a gracious, extremely talented
woman. It was difficult for me
to read this autobiography because in it she
revealed what no child should have to undergo.
I told her I would have liked to have
"shot her parents". It is amazing that she suffered
so much at their hands and survived
to become the wonderful artist that she is today.
Carole is not only a talented artist
but is also a fascinating writer. If
you can handle the early sections of the book,
in which she describes her abuse as a
young child- you too will be absorbed in the
telling of her life's story.

"I have been captivated by your book, awed by your
writing ability, and amazed that you have survived all
you have!" ANN RULE, bestselling author, lecturer

iiiii by Midwest Book Review
A profound and inspirational story of the struggle
to overcome a legacy of personal suffering.
October 7, 2007
Barefoot Girl Out of Ohio: A Memoir of
Survival and Overcoming is the true-life memoir
of a woman who suffered terrible, long-lasting scars
from the physical and sexual abuse she endured while
growing up during the Great Depression.
Betrayed by the relatives that should have
protected her - parents, grandparents, and uncle
- she turned to art and music to survive.
Though she struggled to escape her nightmare existence,
the wounds inflicted on her drew her on a self-destructive
path. One marriage an abusive artist
led to mental collapse and divorce; another
marriage to a sadistic cult leader ended only after
he threatened to kill her and her children.
At last she found a steadfast husband, but the trauma
she had coped with all her life left her with
devastating anxiety and depression. In
the safety of a remote dwelling in the mountains,
she at last had to face herself, and the
childhood stolen from her. A profound and
inspirational story of the struggle to
overcome a legacy of personal suffering.

iiiii Worth your time, August 12, 2007
By M. McGuire -
Carole Estrup's book ought to be required
reading for everyone who thinks that urban
life in mid-century America was like TV land
portrayed it. Her parents (and some relatives)
were a surreal combination of uptight normality
and careless sadism. In this fascinating and
shocking memoir she holds back nothing,
including her own failings; but what emerges
is a ferocious will to survive and succeed.

Personal stories like this go far to explain
Arendt's "Banality of evil". Estrup's gift is
in showing us how the colossal enormities that
make it into the news were carried out on a
small scale every day in that miserable era.

The tone lightens later in the book, and success
and fulfillment ensue. But this is real life,
and unlike the characters in novels, who seem to
recover immediately and completely from the the
worst traumas, people who live in reality are
marked by their experiences. Reading this book
was that kind of experience, and I'll remember
and reflect on it for a long time.

Barefoot Girl will take you to a different world.
August 9, 2007 By jd2 (ID) iiiii

The author recounts her childhood mental, physical
and sexual abuse in ways that left me emotionally
drained. She pulls no punches and leaves no doubt as
to what happened in her life. How Oprah missed this
autobiography is beyond me. This book will open your
eyes to the evil that is child abuse and to the horror
children experience in many of our so-called, normal,
American families. This is a must read for all those
not aware of the hidden secret, as well as those who
have suffered abuse or think that keeping a secret
is a good thing. (Like the Catholic Church and others.)
One look at CaroleEstrup.com and it's clear the
author of this book is one of the great, artistic
painters of her day. I thank her for having the courage
to share her amazing story. The world is a better
place for what she has created on canvas and in life,
despite all the evil that tried to prevent it.

A powerful, astonishing story,
June 21, 2007 By JRup (CA) iiiii

This is an honest, sometimes gritty telling of an all
too common experience, the betrayal and exploi-
tation of the very young. But it is also a triumphant
battle of a child's creative impulse kindled against
the kind of chilling abuse which devastates so many
for an entire lifetime. Bravo!