Join the Bainbridge Public Library for the December 2022 First Friday Art Walk, featuring artist CR Rousseau.

The Bainbridge Public Library is dedicated to spreading the joy of reading and the discovery of ideas with not just our local community, but with visitors from near and afar. In addition, the library is fortunate to house beautiful local works of art both inside and outside the building. Each month the library celebrates a local artist (or artists) with an exhibit, which opens monthly on the Island’s First Friday Art Walk tour, and includes a reception hosted by the featured artist.

The Bainbridge Public Library is proud to present an exhibit by artist Caroline “CR” Rousseau

Caroline “CR” Rousseau will host a “meet and greet” from 5pm-7pm on Friday, December 2nd to open her new exhibit, “Reading Between the Lines: A Collection of Random Works” for First Friday Art Walk

Caroline “CR” Rousseau has always been a painter. She remembers receiving her first paint brushes at age four from her grandmother, her first collector. While largely self-taught, Caroline studied art in various different forums with other artists in the US and Europe and at university.

She attributes most of her training to observing light, exploring different mediums and never giving up. She explained, “It takes a fair amount of courage to follow one’s interests in creativity and fall in love with the process… I hope to bring forward a personalized sense of the natural world with twists of imbued color wrapped into abstract forms, like when you wake up and don’t quite remember the dream you had the night before, but you can still feel the blurred lines of the shapes, the colors and the moments.”

Caroline works with a host of mediums, such as oils, acrylics, water color, ink, print and other media. In addition, her work has spanned various genres from landscapes to abstracts, in small to large scale. “My intention is to play stylistically and experiment,” she told me. “Playing gives way to evolution and makes space to get out of my own way.”

When she opened her first studio at the far end of Seattle’s Post Alley in the 1990s, she created large paintings of small items blown out of proportion, such as a massive fictitious postal stamp. Her live/work loft was often packed with works-in-process. Galleries requested that she expand her work to landscapes, especially coastal landscapes. Today, she creates large colorful abstracts often inspired by water.

“This random assemblage of art is curated from my studio archive, past shows and experiments over the years,” she said in her artist statement for Bainbridge Public Library. “My work is classically oil, both landscapes and large abstracts. Today, I exhibit primarily in Sausalito and San Francisco, with small shows on Bainbridge. Past show locations include Seattle, Edmonds, Carmel-by-the-Sea and Santa Barbara; my work can also be found in private collections internationally.”

Caroline and her husband, Christopher hadn’t originally planned on moving to Bainbridge Island from their home in Seattle. They dreamed of warmer climes, traveling throughout the coasts of California, Portugal and France, finally deciding on France. The pandemic, however, put a halt on those plans and led them to explore Bainbridge Island as their new home.

“We love life on Bainbridge Island,” she told me. “The people are kind, the air is fresh and it feels so good to breathe. The tall Evergreen trees lining long glacial-carved roads, our island community where people say hello and getting to enjoy the simple pleasures and treasures of a coming-and-going tide – we are grateful to be here. We’ve even become oyster farmers, who would have guessed that?!”

Since moving to Bainbridge, Caroline hasn’t slowed down. Recognized in Greece and France in new print and online publications this winter, her work continues to evolve and expand. In her free time, she and her husband love to cook and find local fresh ingredients here on Bainbridge. Out of this love, they created Finding Fresh Bainbridge, a website that shares the freshest locally grown veggies, eggs, herbs, flowers and wine with Bainbridge Islanders by identifying and mapping out all of our wonderful island farm and flower stands. They created it because they wanted to find the freshest things to cook with and they wanted to share what they found with their new island friends and to help connect local gardeners, farmers and the community. If you’d like to read more about Finding Fresh Bainbridge, click here.

Caroline’s exhibit is available for viewing and sale at the Bainbridge Public Library throughout the month of December. The exhibit will be available during regular library hours. For more information, please see the library website, www.bainbridgepubliclibrary.org.

25% of All Art Proceeds Support the Bainbridge Public Library.

Caroline’s work can also be found on her website: www.StudioRousseau.com.

As always, thank you for supporting your Bainbridge Public Library and local artists. If you have interest in exhibiting your work, feel free to contact Linda Meier, art coordinator, at lindameier2000@gmail.com

***Content and images provided by Linda Meier, Bainbridge Public Library and CR Rousseau

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