A new retrospective exhibition at Step Up Gallery features the figurative works of artist Carole Belliveau over a period of 45 years:
“The Road Taken, a 45-year Journey” by Carole Belliveau of Santa Fe, NM
Step Up Gallery at Mesa Public Library, Los Alamos, NM
October 14 – November 9, 2022
stepupgallery.org
The exhibit will focus on Belliveau’s captivating female figure paintings and contrast the figurative work with rich use of gold and silver leaf. To provide the historical background of Belliveau’s artistic journey, award-winning dolls representing her early days will also be on display.
Belliveau began her artistic journey as a self-taught Fine Art Doll Artist, designing her own collection introduced at The International Toy Fair each year in New York City. She was juried in as the youngest member of the National Institute of American Dolls Artists and was known for her one of a kind and limited-edition dolls and original Teddy Bear designs. In 1981, the book Dollmaker, The Eyelight and the Shadow was published featuring the process of creating a portrait doll of her son Matthew. This doll and others became collector favorites winning many Doll of the Year Awards. She also designed toy concepts for companies such as Hasbro, Zapf and Marie Osmond Dolls.
Belliveau moved to California in 1989 and completed her BFA at Academy of Art University in San Francisco cum laude. She turned her focus to both figure painting and plein air landscape painting. Her years of improvising, using diverse materials to create miniature shoes, designing clothing, wig-making, wax working and hundreds of other sculpture skills, informed her approach to mixed media figure painting. She began to combine her oil and acrylic paints with passages of gold and silver leaf to express her singular esthetic. Jurors and collectors have characterized Belliveau’s figurative work as “ethereal, light-filled and lyrical.”
Five years ago Belliveau and her husband relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have one adult son and two granddaughters who have been the subject of intimate and loving portraits over the years. Recently, she has taken on administrative roles in the very active and successful arts organization, Plein Air Painters of New Mexico, and currently holds the office of Vice President.
Belliveau is the Grand Prize Winner of TRAC 2019, an international competition and is a Signature Member of American Women Artists (AWA), Plein Air Painters of New Mexico (PAPNM) and Monterey Bay Plein Air Painters Association (MBPAPA), where she is a Past President as well. She has won the BOLD Brush Awards in Oil Painting and Best Acrylic and her paintings are in many personal and public collections nationally.
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