Carol Brenner Tobe is a Louisville native who has lived in Floyds Knobs, Indiana for over forty years.  She is a graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Louisville where she was a Hite Scholar and studied with noted landscape painter Eugene Leake; well-known Louisville artist Mary Spencer Nay; and Charles Crodel, German artist and professor.  Tobe worked in the fields of historic preservation and art gallery and historical museum administration.  She is the retired director of the Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville.  The last exhibit of her paintings was at the Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany.  Titled “View/Review,” the 2008 exhibit featured Tobe’s paintings and the etchings of New Albany printmaker, Mary Lou Hess. Creating art has always had a primary place in her busy life and the works in this exhibit are Tobe’s most recent paintings.

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From the Artist:

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My home is in the rural hills “knobs” of Southern Indiana and I am happiest when I’m in my garden or enjoying the changing variety of the broad landscape outside my windows. For subject matter, however, I am primarily interested in more intimate landscapes—fragments of neighborhoods, back yards, gardens--both formal and informal.

 

I photograph subjects that interest me and combine the images I have collected to create compositions for my paintings. I enjoy exploring the relationship of natural forms to buildings, fences, sculpture, and “yard art” and freely interpret, and often intensify, their colors and shapes.  My medium is traditional oil paint on canvas and I love the feel of oil paints, applied directly. In my paintings I want to celebrate and inspire others to appreciate the beauty of the familiar world we share.