"As far as I know, nobody has painted this coastal plain since the 1930's. Carol Plumb walked right in and planted her flag right in the middle of it. With her first landscape show, she stole it out from under everybody's noses. Now she owns it."
- Mark Clark, Galeria 409
"Driving across the coastal plain to Padre Island, no one stops. There is something vaguely intimidating about the vastness of the expanse between the chaparral and the sea. Viewed through the windshields of speeding automobiles, it is a terra incognita, unknown territory, for almost everyone who passes through it. For Carol Plumb the vast, mysterious spaces and changing atmosphere are ideal subjects for painting.
Starting with Bahia Grande and moving in an ever widening circle that encompasses Laguna Atascosa and Mezquital, Tamualipas, Plumb depicts the changing light and ebbing tides of this unpopulated landscape.
Avoiding the usual cliches of Texas scenery painting, she paints the beaches and estuaries from a fresh perspective, a modern view that acknowledges luminist painters of the ninetenth century, and the abstract artists of the 20th.
Sitting in a room full of Plumb's contemplative paintings of sea and land and sky, the viewer is transported from the hectic modern world to a place where sun and wind and tides are all that matters."
-Enersto Sanchez
As an "emerging" artist, Carol Plumb is proving herself incredibly popular. The appeal of her soft-focus landscapes comes from a skillful combination of gentle palette, grainy texture, and a modern sensibility--no doubt related to her background in printing and photography. My preference among her diverse water, bridge, and sunset marine scenes is for the most abstracted series, such as the works of Mesquital, Mexico. Plumb simplifies the undulating shapes of the northern Mexican coast into geometric forms reminiscent of dreams, surrealism, and the haze-inducing effects of the strong subtropical sun. As her canvases grow larger and she stretches her technique into even more abstracted and flatter form, I look forward to seeing where Plumb's brush will lead her.
Jennifer Cahn, Ph.D.
Independent curator