Carolyn Crampton: for love of punk and rabbits

Get your week rolling with this week's installment of Drive-by interviews with artist Carolyn Crampton.

Why do you think you became interested in a lifetime in art? My older sister, Jeanne, taught me to draw horses. My mother painted one canvas in her lifetime, but when I was seven years old, she gave me her oil set and some canvases. Her idea was that whenever I awoke really early, I was to quietly paint in the basement. Two of my paintings were exhibited in an art show and that really went to my head. My best friend and I started the Little Artists Club. I was the President and Mary Ann Wolf was the Vice President. The club had only two members but we had a fancy art opening for our families in Wolf's laundry room with the art held up by clothing pins. Later, other girls used to pay me to draw them a horse.

My mother, my sister and I, spent a summer on a grand tour of Europe. This included many major museums starting with the Louvre. I felt at home with the classical paintings as well as with modern art. Later, when taking college art history classes, I had vivid memories of seeing the original works.

At home, we subscribed to the New Yorker magazine and I especially loved the Charles Addams cartoons. Jeanne and I used to fight over Mad Magazine when we could convince Mom to buy one.

Do you work from photos or how do you create these paintings? I usually do these works at home, sketching or painting from life, in natural light. I paint in the afternoon and rabbits can be pretty somnolent at that time of day. They seem to like the attention. If I am painting food items, those have to be a higher level or they get eaten or disrupted.

What inspires your paintings? This series is inspired by Classical after-the-hunt scenes featuring dead game and other foodstuffs, which wee often hung in dining rooms. As a vegetarian and rabbit person, I needed to update this genre.

There is something nice about having a sentient creature looking out from a still life, and there is an odd relationship between them and the other objects. I try to make the animals look really alive.

Other than your art practice, is there other creative work that you do? In college, I played in punk bands and published a fanzine. I moved to San Francisco with an all-girl band, and played at clubs like the legendary Fab Mab. I still play music and write songs for The Insufferables. Songwriting is just another way to distill an idea and express myself, and as it turns out, good practice for writing a book in rhyme.

Is there something you are currently working on, or are excited about starting? I just finished my third storybook featuring drawings of rabbits. “Ladybird: My Eight Lives” which tells the story of a typical rabbit who goes from home to home, inspired by true stories. I spent many days following the rabbit around the apartment drawing her.

I originally adopted a rabbit, because my landlord would not allow a dog or a cat. Rabbits, easy to hide, are nice pets, but they were not as common then. I wrote and illustrated the humorous yet informative guide to bunny behavior: “Rabbit Language or, ‘Are you going to eat that?’ “. Two years ago, I illustrated an Easter Bunny story “Dumbunny” by my old Vice President, Mary Ann Wolf.

Swing by and check out Carolyn Crampton work on exhibition now till Oct 29th in our Still Life show - featuring 39 works from artists across the country.

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