A new year has begun, and people all over the world are setting goals to simplify and focus on what's important. A new art exhibit, beginning next Friday, fits right in with that theme.
"Life is already too complicated," said Lindey Carter of Layton. "Art, for me, is kind of an escape, where I get rid of the extra noise and clutter and enjoy something beautiful and simple."
Carter says it's always been that way for her. Growing up in a large family of very active children, she used to escape the chaos by drawing. That need for quiet simplicity shows in her watercolor paintings.
"I take a landscape and really simplify it," she said. "I take out the extra noise and get the basic impression of the landscape."
That may mean focusing on one tree branch with a bird perched on it, a close-up of a street sign, or even the way the light falls on a single leaf.
"When I'm driving, or out and about, I see something and think, 'How would I paint that?' Then I focus in on something that I think would be a pretty painting," she said.
Occassionally, Carter's paintings are inspired by reading.
"Those paintings are even more simplified because they come from an impression from a book," she said.
Carter, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Utah pioneer artist C.C.A. Christensen, is a graduate of Weber State University. She often creates her watercolor paintings on a hard paper product called gator board, covered with gesso.
Artsy women
Irene Rampton mostly paints images of women.
"I paint men as well, but I paint women of all ages -- women with character in their faces," she said. "I'm just drawn to the eyes, and the whole face."
Rampton, of Salt Lake City, is a retired commercial artist turned full-time painter.
"I'll just see somebody on the street, or in a cafe or in a class, and ask if they'll model for me," she said, adding that she sometimes makes paintings from photos of women shopping.
The exhibit at the Eccles Community Art Center will also include paintings of cottages, inspired by a trip to England's historic Cotswolds region, but expect to see a lot more images of women than of stone houses with thatched roofs.
"If I'm in England, I'm going to focus on the cottages ... but when I'm at home in my studio, just doodling around, I end up doing faces," she said. "I just usually end up drawing a woman's face, and why that happens, I don't really know."
Inspired man
An exhibit of paintings by Roy N. Moore of Hooper also opens next Friday, in the art center's Carriage House gallery.
Moore, who grew up on a dairy farm in Westernville, N.Y., has been painting for 40 years. He was 11 years old when a friend of his mother showed him one of her paintings -- he knew from that moment that he wanted to paint, too.
He received a set of oil paints for his next birthday, and then took classes in high school and college. He tries to paint every day, and has recently started going outdoors for plein-air painting.
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