Carrie Belk (White Plains)

Carrie Belk grew up surrounded by exquisite design and encouraged to draw from a young age. Her parents owned an interior design and bespoke furniture business, which gained renown during the 50s, 60s and 70s. Twenty years in these surrounds inspired in Belk a fearless approach to color, texture, pattern and light. After attending public schools in Queens, Belk graduated from New York's Cooper Union with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1981. She studied graphic design, drawing, painting, sculpture and calligraphy. After college, Belk worked as a graphic designer, winning numerous awards for her work. Belk’s creative journey has taken her from glass mosaics to oils to the ancient Egyptian medium of encaustics. For her, materials are intrinsic to expression. The emigré status of Belk's parents, has been a formative ingredient in her identity as a person and an artist. Belk's paintings expose a search for revealed epiphanies emerging from layered color, pattern and textures amassed and buttressed by textiles and threads woven in and pried out, building towards glimpses of polished and pure colors, essential truths carved from surrounds of ambiguity.