Carolyn Walker was born in San Jose, California, grew up in the Central Valley, and has lived all of her adult life in various cities of the Bay Area. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in English, and has worked in sports administration, graphic design and retail management. Her longest held position is as mother to two accomplished athletes, who currently earn a living doing what they love. She also spent ten years as a singer/songwriter playing clubs and events around the Bay Area in the band Acoustic Son. She currently resides and paints on a former dairy farm in Sebastopol in West Sonoma County.
Carolyn has been an artist all of her life, but it wasn’t until her children were essentially “launched” that she decided to make a profession of it. While she has never officially gone to Art School (capital A, capital S), she has taken classes from numerous art institutions and studied with many talented artists and teachers. Her interest is mainly in modern abstract expressionistic art, influenced by her family’s connection to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, founded by her great-great grandfather, and by her exposure to the Bay Area Figurative Movement. She has had a previous show of her art work at Spirit House in Woodside highlighting the horse/human connection. Her last body of work was inspired by her own participation in sport, as well as by being a spectator and fan for all types of athletic endeavors. She participated last June in West Sonoma County’s Art at the Source for the first time. Her current series, Sonoma Abstractions, is in its early stages of exploration.