Keep in Touch - Updates from painter Carylon Cooper

April 24, 2019

A Beach Towel

Reading Study Guide to “A Woman’s Call to Prayer” by Elizabeth George Sitting in a lounge chair, on a thick white towel provided by the hotel – no, we didn’t need to bring the big, heavy beach towels from home that took up so much room m the suitcase – my eyes are drawn to the beautiful blue sky and big white clouds drifting by. I close my book because Elizabeth George said to. She writes, “Stop where you are

April 9, 2019

The Sensory Button

Sleep happens to me as my head travels downward to the pillow. I’ve come to realize that I have a sensory button on the back of my head. As that button makes contact with the pillow, it turns off all of my voluntary thinking and actions. I’m asleep – this device is on a timer. When the device triggers around 4 am, my head levitates from the pillow – all unintentional. The intentional calls me to negotiate the steps downward

September 13, 2018

I want to share my Artist Statement…

written 2011… Once upon a time I was a chicken farmer. Within a year of raising these small peeping creatures in a cardboard box with a heat lamp as their ceiling, I turned from chicken farmer to trapper – live trap, of course, but none the less a trapper. My new best friend was a fellow named Floyd – “Floyd the coon man.” Floyd, with his snow white beard reaching his chest, came on property and showed me how to

August 24, 2018

Common Materials

Underneath all of the real art supplies, painstakingly placed in my car were 7-8 pieces of cardboard – some were old U-Haul boxes broken down after our move from one home to the mountain where we live now. Other sections of cardboard were torn and tattered from protecting the real art traveling to galleries. Most recently my journey in art (that also parallels my life story) is a popular notion of transparency. Seeking out what’s real and purposefully exposing it.

June 5, 2018

Takes

Aunt Ann quipped, “They made me take piano lessons, but it didn’t take.” It’s a curious thing what “takes” in our lives. Things that take stick. Not just adhering to the surface like a sticky note, but more like penetrating our very core, as the South began to seep into my pores at 9 years old. My birthplace may have been Detroit, but southern wrapped around me like kudzu in the Nantahala Gorge. It took! One of those curious things

May 25, 2016

Gracious Plenty

Down on 11th Street, truck farmers brought in their homegrown produce. The tomatoes, peaches, okra all come in balsa wood “crates”. These small oblong crates were just the right size for picnic lunches. In Ladybug’s kitchen, after the produce came out the baskets were hand washed and put in the sun to dry out. Small groupings of cherries were hand painted on the side to match the green binder at the top. Then a red checked napkin was spread out

July 17, 2015

Ballard Designs Interview

I wanted to share a wonderful interview from Ballard Designs. Hopefully it will give you more information regarding my art as well as give glory to God, who makes all things (even my art) possible! … Ballard Designs: Tell us a little about yourself and your path to becoming an artist. Carylon Killebrew: In the fourth grade my teacher told me I was going to be an artist, and I just took her word for it. That’s why I went

Feb. 21, 2015