A Portrait of the Artist: Carol Lee Thompson

When you mix Black Oil, which contains white lead, with Mastic Varnish, you get Maroger's painting medium, which dries quickly but regains its viscosity the moment a brush sweeps over it, therefore allowing the artist to paint wet-on-wet or wet-on-dry, as the occasion demands. The Old Masters, including Peter Paul Rubens, Titian and Diego Velasquez used a similar paint thinner and achieved the very subtle color and value transitions that gave a life-like glow to their figures and still lifes.

In a sense, the story of Classical Realist painter, Carol Lee Thompson, who showed her work with the , begins with Jacques Maroger's recreation of this versatile painting medium in the early 20th century.

Curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Maroger emigrated to the United States in 1939, and after a brief period as a lecturer at the Parsons School of Design in New York, he became a Professor of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Maroger's presence and advocacy of the techniques of the Old Masters at MICA stirred debate between his followers and proponents of Abstract Expressionism. Following the popularity of the movement nationwide, the curriculum overwhelmingly turned over to the latter camp, and Maroger's students established their own school.

Ann Schuler, nee Didusch, founded the Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore in 1959 with her husband, sculptor Hans C. Schuler and former Director of MICA. Established in a building owned by the Schuler family in central Baltimore, the school is currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places and continues to operate in the same structure. The school was founded with the aim of preserving the traditions of the Old Masters and upholding the legacy of Jacques Maroger. Ann Schuler was apprentice to Maroger for 20 years during his tenure at MICA.

Carol Lee Thompson decided to attend the Schuler School of Fine Art after taking a leap and leaving behind her career as an art teacher in Baltimore County public schools. She studied with Ann Schuler who would become one of her dearest friends.

Although her teachers recognized an early talent in art in Thompson, she did not really show an acute interest in drawing or painting at first. It was not until her teenage years that she began taking her own initiative to create artwork.

Her father was a medical illustrator at Johns Hopkins University, but Thompson was not encouraged to study art. Instead she received a Bachelors Degree in Art Education from Towson State University and taught art at all levels in Baltimore County.

"After high school I wanted to go to the Schuler School," said Thompson who learned about the school through a recreation teacher who taught her painting as a teenager and believed that Carol Lee belonged at the Schuler School.

After teaching art for seven years, Thompson decided that Ann Schuler "was not getting any younger," and she enrolled herself to study with her.

Five years at the Schuler School gave Thompson a strong and proven foundation in the techniques of the Old Masters. She painted mostly figures and still lifes and developed a lasting bond with Ann Schuler.

"After graduating I started doing landscapes," said Thompson who loves the outdoors and the painting of the Russian Itinerants who emphasized the relationship of people to their surroundings in their work. "Eventually I was practically making a living off my landscapes."

Thompson also paints portraits, still lifes, western themes, boats and equestrian scenes. The latter give her the chance to unite her love of nature with her new-found passion for horses.

"A major turning point for me was when I left Baltimore's inner city - I lived in the Inner Harbor - and moved to horse country. I said to myself: I am not going to do things I don't want to do anymore."

She deemphasized still lifes and portraits in her repertoire and turned to something she did not learn in school: her love of nature. She received some help from a friend who connected her to the Greenspring Valley Hunt Club in Owings Mills, Maryland, where Thompson began showing her horse paintings.

The artist paints both in the studio and en plein air.

"When Ann passed away in May 2010, I suffered a big loss. I was afraid that like many artists who begin to falter when they experience such events, I would hit a wall. I was afraid that if I stopped painting, I would stop forever," said Thompson who overcame the loss of a mentor and treasured friend by trusting her instincts.

"One day I picked up a palette knife and started pasting paint onto the canvas and did an ethereal sunrise landscape."

Although this was highly unusual and not in keeping with the tradition of the Schuler School, Thompson continues to use a palette knife in lieu of the customary brush for many of her landscapes.

Her connection to the Schuler School of Fine Arts and Ann Schuler's legacy remains current and steady. Thompson has been teaching oil painting at the Schuler School for 27 years. Her students range from right out of high school to 88 years old.

"Ann was my best friend, and I try to follow her teaching as closely as I can," said Thompson who grinds her own pigments, stretches her own Belgian linen canvases and mixes her own Flemish Maroger paint medium. She also does her best to impart these teachings to her students.

"I want two things for my students. I don't want them to just express themselves without having a strong background in foundation. At the same time, I don't want them to just be copyists and just learn the skills without expressing themselves."

Thompson also leads the Thursday Art Group, which paints out of the Zoll Studio School of Fine Art in Timonium, Maryland. The group, which includes 30 artists from all over Maryland, also adheres to the Classcial Realist tradition of the Old Masters.

Thompson shows extensively and is featured in galleries throughout the country, including Tucson, Washington, D.C, San Francisco, Colorado, North Carolina and Easton, Maryland. Her work is part of many corporate and private collections, including the Butler Institute of Art and the U.S. State Department. Her exhibits include the Tucson Museum's "Women Artists and the West Show," the Gilcrease and Albuquerque Museum's "Miniature Show," The C.M. Russell Museum Auction and the Oil Painters of America Exhibits. Additionally, she has been awarded in the Cheyenne Frontier Days Museum Show, the Salmagundi Club in New York, in International Miniature Shows and in the Fredrix "Spirit of America" Competition.

She is published in Fresh Flowers - the Best of Flower Painting and Art of the American West. She was a "Preview Artist" in Art of the West Magazine. She is also in the American Artist Magazine article, " Baltimore Realists." Southwest Art Magazine has featured her in "Collecting." She also appeared in International Art Magazine in "Master Painters of the World."

Through September 2011, her work is on view at the Crossgate Gallery in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she was invited to display her equestrian-themed paintings during the horse races.

The Troika Gallery in Easton, Maryland and Forge Fine Art Gallery, Ltd. in Baltimore County represent the artist and have ongoing shows of her work.

To visit the artist's website, click here.