“Animals are my muse and the inspiration for my paintings. I have always been enchanted by animals, even as a small child.

We have much to learn from animals.

I feel a special kinship and an emotional bond – a spiritual connection – to animals.

My paintings share this intimate connection – a look into their heart and soul - a glimpse of their spirit.”

       Carol Santora is an internationally-collected, award-winning artist best known for her expressionistic and soulful animal paintings. Her subjects include horses, cows, sheep, moose, bears, dogs and pets. Attracted to the pure spirit of animals, no other subject has ever called to her in the same way that animals do.

Whether working in pastel or acrylic, color is the tool of Santora’s artistic expression. Her current work is divided between an exploration of acrylic media on panel, and her contemporary pastels. A Signature Member of the Pastel Society of America, Santora, (BFA, summa cum laude, Framingham State University), is a highly respected animal artist who travels often to study animals in the wild and in protected environments.

Beginning with her ‘core’ color – a flaming red-orange – Santora’s pastel animals emerge in vivid, emotional color in bold, meaningful pastel strokes. A true colorist, the artist’s work is grounded in representation, yet she is not bound by that. As she works, a completely realistic depiction gives way to a more artistic, contemporary rendering that serves her colorist and expressive purposes.

Like the Fauves, Santora uses bold, non-representational color and representational form to convey a myriad of feelings. In addition, cropped and close-up views, asymmetrical compositions, and strong reflected light characterize her work.

In her acrylic paintings, Santora begins by randomly creating texture with gesso, then drawing into it while wet with the end of a brush, or allowing it to dry and drawing on it with permanent marker or graphite and charcoal.

Once she starts the painting process, she works to complete the painting in one ‘sitting’, layering a limited palette of colors, brushing or pouring on paint, rubbing or scrubbing off with gloved fingers and spraying with water or medium. Through this marriage of color and texture, the image is allowed to emerge. Intuitive, subconscious and spontaneous, Santora’s process infuses each piece with emotion.

These new acrylic paintings are inspired by wild mustangs at a local rescue. The paintings are about equine emotions and attributes. They may portray the myths and fables surrounding the horse, Native American folklore, and/or symbology found in petroglyphs and prehistoric cave art.

Santora’s art is a means to respond on a personal level to animals and share the intimate connection she feels with animals with her viewer.

Internationally collected, she is currently represented by the Wright Gallery, Cape Porpoise, ME, the Mill Brook Gallery, Concord, NH, and the Grand Teton Gallery, Jackson, WY, and has a gallery and working studio in her home in Kennebunk, ME.

Carol Santora photographing horses in the Grand Tetons, WY September 2011	Carol Santora photographing the Blaisdell Farm Herefords, fall 2010
Carol Santora painting in her studio, Bridget Burns Photo, 2009	Carol Santora painting cows at Wolfe's Neck Farm, summer 2009