Cloar, Carroll

Carroll Cloar (January 18, 1913 – April 10, 1993) was a nationally known 20th-century painter born in Earle, Arkansas, who focused his work on surreal views of Southern U.S. themes and on poetically portraying childhood memories of natural scenery, buildings, and people, often working from old photographs found in his family albums. Guy Northrop, in his introduction on page 24 to Hostile Butterflies and Other Paintings by Carroll Cloar (1977), quoted Cloar describing his images as "American faces, timeless dress and timeless customs ... the last of old America that isn't long for this earth". His Panther Bourne work depicted a surreal, Southern-mythic nature scene. Cloar employed pointillism in his painting "Waiting up for Lettie", creating over 800 works in his lifetime. He moved to Memphis in 1930, attending Southwestern at Memphis (later known as Rhodes College) as an English major. His recurrent themes of a "homecoming", implying that the essential beauty of a locale is best understood by one who has left a beloved place behind and then returned, are echoed in his own personal experience of traveling abroad for years and then returning to the South. He began his travels in Europe...