Object ID: 2017.008
Creator: Carol Crump Bryner
Title: Three Doors
Date: 2015
Culture: American
Dimensions: 20×16″
Materials: Oil on panel
Credit: Gift of the artist in honor of the Class of 1967
Provenance: 2015, created; 2015-2017, collection of the artist; 2017, donated to Wheaton. A member of the Class of 1967, Carol Crump Bryner has traveled widely, capturing scenes from around the world in her collages, drawings, and paintings. In particular, her work focuses on “light and its power to enhance the everyday.” This focus on light is understandable, as the artist has lived and worked for more than four decades in Alaska, where the “winters are long and dark, the summers bright and frantic.”
Bryner’s artwork examines the interplay of light and shadow, especially as it enters and exits residential and commercial spaces. As she writes, “Doors, windows, and rooms are some of my favorite painting subjects. When I travel, and when I’m at home, I’m drawn to images where strong light creates timeless and dramatic space. I usually don’t paint at the scene but work on my paintings from sketches and photographs back in my home studio in Anchorage, Alaska.”
In choosing to translate these specific three-dimensional spaces onto a two-dimensional plane, Bryner is joined by other alumni artists, including Tracey Babin, Class of 2009, Antonia Dimitrova, Class of 2006, Walker Downey, Class of 2013, Colin McNamee, Class of 2004, and Judith Knight Nulty, Class of 1966. Their work inspired by doors, windows, and rooms is, like Bryner’s, also part of the Permanent Collection.
This painting depicts the Olson House in Cushing, Maine. Bryner has long been inspired by this home, creating dozens of paintings and collages of its interior and exterior. She writes, “I love the feeling I get when I walk through its empty rooms and see the patterns of light and shadow fall unimpeded onto its floors and walls. I can sense the presence of lives lived in this place, and I try to communicate that presence through my paint. In this particular piece, the light that comes through unseen windows and doors gives the empty rooms a feeling of warmth and quiet.”