Spotted Turtles and Red-Maple Leaves. Watercolor. 2005.
“David Carroll is a madman, a genius, a national treasure” … Annie Dillard
Over recent years I have been ordering my archive – my life’s work – with the goal of finding a buyer or buyers for collections from my creative work of over sixty years.
My work as artist, naturalist, and writer has been widely recognized and highly acclaimed in all three arenas. In sum and in parts it has achieved a broad and varied following throughout the United States and in a number of foreign countries.
The unique collective mastery exhibited in my work in all three fields, along with my advocacy for the true preservation of natural landscapes, their ecosystems and ecologies, formed the basis for my being named a MacArthur Fellow (recipient of their so-called “Genius Award”) in 2006.
A list of selected awards is appended.
I write about this remarkable honor, and the critical support it brought for the continuation of my work over a period of years, in the archival segment discussing my “Nudes on Gold” figure drawings. This account is accompanied by a gallery of images of selected drawings from a series of fifty objects.
I offer a comprehensive three-part core archival collection of written, visual art, and naturalist material for consideration as an acquisition. My primary goal is to have a meaningful representation of my work in all three areas preserved in a collection and made available to scholars, researchers, teachers, students – anyone with an interest in any aspect of my life and work.
I am seeking to find buyers – individual collectors, entities such as universities or other archival institutions, art and science museums, wishing to make acquisitions.
To these ends I am offering a core archive (detailed in the following pages) of my creative and scientific work, my legacy, that has been produced over the course of six decades.
The volume of original material allows for the creation of subsets, smaller collections from all or any of the three primary categories of my oeuvre as a whole. I invite ideas on and discussion of possibilities in these directions.
In addition I make individual objects, primarily drawings and paintings from the many genres in which I work, available for purchase.
The collection’s interconnected three-branched nature adds considerable variety and substance to its value as a resource for research, education, a great variety of courses, articles, lectures, presentations, and exhibitions.
My published books have been and continue to be used as texts – reference and enrichment resources in all grade levels from elementary school to university graduate level courses. They find applications for a wide range of subjects: English literature; creative and scientific writing courses; journaling; environmental and ecological studies, and conservation biology – on to art and art history.
Many prestigious institutions, universities, archives, natural history museums, and others, have expressed keen interest in acquiring my material, terming it “remarkable”, “unique”, and the like.
Unfortunately for the vast majority of originators of creative material, there is an essentially universal response to inquiries seeking to sell their work, echoing “we do not fund acquisitions,” in one permutation or another. It is not possible for me to make a donation of my life’s work. I would, however, be most willing to make donations a part of any funded acquisition.
As indicated above, I am looking to have a collection that includes all three categories housed together in one site. But again, there is sufficient material from which I could also arrange for smaller compartmental collections from all fields. Most all of the categories of archival content are portrayed in the following pages.
It may be of interest for an alum or group of alums to consider purchasing a collection to be donated to an alma mater, or to individuals who would consider this for other than academic institutions such as art and natural history museums. Acquisitions could well be considered for additions to a private collection, or as an investment.
I am interested in discussing all possibilities for acquisitions within the general parameters outlined below.
For many of the following pages I summarize elements of pertinent personal background and history, as well as the subject’s own history. In some cases I discuss my creative process.
I outline archival content for each category. Expanded, annotated inventories and further background can be made available to any party considering an acquisition.
Introductory material includes my resumé; brief biography; selected awards and works in private and public collections, together with an outline of the core archive’s content and summary inventories of its varied branches.
Although this compendium is essentially a completed documentation, it remains to a degree a work in progress. (I could say that about all my endeavors). I will be adding elements from time to time.
These would be along the lines of additional works from my botanical art collection, more treatments of sketchbook material, and such categories as unpublished drafts and other writings; journals; correspondence; and notebooks, from adolescence to the present.
Therefore I invite viewers to return from time to time. I also extend invitations to visit our website, https:/www.carrollartgallery.com, where there are selected items for sale. These include my books, prints of my work and my artist wife Laurette’s paintings, T-shirts with designs from my books (spotted turtles; dragonfly; trout), turtle necklaces fashioned by Laurette, as well as original art.
My archive for sale pages feature selected galleries of art and writing from my published and unpublished works.
The absolutely massive task of posting my archive, and our web site, would not have been possible were it not for the technical and design expertise, enduring patience, and all-round support of our webmaster Lou Bradbard, and his Wild Goose Web Design.
With best wishes, David
My Five Published Books
Trout Reflections
Following the Water
Year of the Turtle
Self-Portrait With Turtles, A Memoir
Swampwalker’s Journal
Hand Bound Books
A Book of a Number of Hours
A Book of Winter Buds
A Book of Winter Branches
Borradores
Landscapes – January 20, 1978 – April 1978
Variations: February 1, 1967 – August 1, 1968
Visions: Drawings and Paintings: 1976 – 1988
Exhibitions
“Seldom Seen” Exhibition at the Davidow Center
“Beyond Words” Exhibition at the Currier Museum
Galleries
“Seldom Seen” Gallery
David’s Wildlife Studies Sketchbook
Virtual Gallery of Art Produced for My Five Books
“Regarding Women Regarding…” Introduction
Sketchbook Gallery: 4/1/1985 – 10/14/1987
Swamp Sketchbook
The Swamp Dialogs
Drawings and Watercolors Produced to Illustrate my Published Books
CODIT – Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees