Carol Lorraine Sutton (3 September 1945 – 26 February 2025) was a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. who was living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranged from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and was noted for its use of color. Some of her paintings have been related to ontology.
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Early life and education
The daughter of Robert William Sutton, a designer and manufacturer of marine instruments and Nancy Chester Sustare, artist and homemaker, Carol spent her first six years living in a log cabin high on the sand dunes of Chesapeake Bay overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. She won a blue ribbon for her art in the Junior Section at the Sears-Allstate Tidewater Arts Festival. She received two Virginia Museum Fellowships and studied at Richmond Professional Institute (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia earning a BFA in 1967 along with a Gold Key and Art Achievement Award and a scholarship to attend the 'School of Visual Arts' in New York City.
Sutton received two teaching fellowships which allowed her to attend the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), where her professors introduced her to the work of Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. In 1969 she graduated with a Masters of Fine Art degree.
Early career
In 1967, when Sutton was twenty-two, her work entered the Jacob Kainen Collection, of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art with a portfolio of sixteen serigraphs titled The Artist As A Young Woman - Picabia. Thinking that her artistic goals and the materials she used were similar to those of Eva Hesse, Will Insley, Sutton's professor at UNCG, introduced the two women in 1969 in his New York City loft. That year a large scale sculpture she created was purchased by 'Weatherspoon Art Gallery' of Greensboro, N.C.
Working on large sculpture in the isolation of her studio in Greensboro, North Carolina Sutton was offered a solo show of these works at The O.K. Harris Gallery in New York. However, she instead moved to Canada and married the sculptor André Fauteux with whom she had two children, Viva-Laura Sutton-Fauteux (1980-2016) and Yale Sutton-Fauteux.
While working in Canada, Sutton was awarded Ontario Arts Council grants in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, and 1979. She received a bursary and two travel grants from the Canada Council for the Arts between 1983 and 1992.
In Canada Sutton produced multiple exhibitions across Canada and showed with the Theo Waddington Galleries, Montreal, and later at Gallery One in Toronto. In Toronto, Sutton also did sculpture collaborations with contemporary electronic music composers. In Canada Sutton's work received positive reviews from critics Clement Greenberg and Karen Wilkin, and was influenced by the artists Anthony Caro and Helen Frankenthaler, all of whom regularly came to her Toronto studio. Fauteux introduced Sutton to Jack Bush in 1974 and both have been included in a number of exhibitions related to Bush's influence.
In 1977, Sutton presented her first Canadian exhibition at the A.C.T. Gallery. In 1978 Sutton held her first New York one-woman show at the William Edward O'Reilly Gallery. In the U.S.A. Sutton's work was noted by critic Kenworth Moffett, the Contemporary Curator of The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who purchased her work 'Alvertie' for their collection and included her in the André Emmerich Gallery touring show, The New Generation: A Curator's Choice (1980).
Eight years after she left, Sutton returned to New York to show as an artist, this time as a painter not a sculptor. There she received an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant.
Later career
Sutton became known for her large scale abstract acrylic paintings, which she painted with canvas laid directly on the floor. Her art has been linked by critics to the art movement called Lyrical Abstraction which is related to the tradition of Color Field Painting. Her smaller paper works often took on unusual structural forms and had widely extended edges, sometimes cut in wave shapes. She became known in the 1970s for her "fan" paintings and for her long horizontal pictures.
Sutton was encouraged by critic Michael Fried whom she met in 1986 at Triangle Artist Workshop. In 1987 Sutton was invited to participate in the Triangle Art Workshop in Barcelona, her third Triangle workshop. Two years later a Canada Council Grant allowed her to again travel to Europe to photograph and study ironwork throughout Spain and France. The experience resulted in a series of paintings titled 'The Spirit Balcony Paintings'. Roald Nasgaard, in Abstract Painting in Canada, writes of the artist: "Always a fluid and luscious painter of great gusto, comfortable with intimacy as well as the grand scale."
Major group exhibitions
1968 Gallery of Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, now called South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art - SECCA' -The Curator and Director then was Ted Potter: sculpture. Title: 'Five Pink Polyethylene Plastic Bags.
1969 "Art on Paper", Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A., November. Juror was Mr. Richard Bellamy, of New York City. (2 works, black paper 3' x 5 2/3" rolled, pinned & clipped with paper clips, 1969)
1969 "Montpelier Farm Stable Show of Eight Artists", Landover, Upper Marlboro, Maryland, October (sculpture of glass titled: 'Global March')
1976 "Olympiad XXI", Montreal, Quebec, (4 paintings)
1976 "Abstractions", Gallery-Straford, Stratford, Ontario, Canada; Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, France; and Canada House, London, England ("Untitled :Tropical Series" painting, 1976)
1977 "New Abstract Art", Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
1978 "Certain Traditions: Recent British and Canadian Art" (paintings, Lockhaven, 1977, Bay Bridge, 1977, and Cove, 1977) Touring Canada & United Kingdom: Mostyn Gallery, Lhanducho, Wales, City Art Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland, Herbert Art Gallery, Coventry, England, Commonwealth Institute, London, England
1978 "Carol Sutton and Thomas Downing", William Edward O'Reilly Inc., New York, New York, U.S.A
1980 "The Staff Collects - An Experiment" - Shell Canada, Harbourfront Art Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
1980 "Sutton, Saito, and Ross", Salander-O'Reilly Galleries Inc., New York, New York, U.S.A. ( paintings)
Music commissions
1972 AUTOMATIC DUO by David Jaeger and James Montgomery
1973 FANCYE(^ Reference 11) by David Jaeger and Carol Sutton for Organ Toronto, Ontario, Canada and computer synthesized sound, moving sculpture, still sculpture and lights, for New Music Concerts, Concert Hall Organ - Inaugural Concerts, Edward Johnson Building, University of Toronto. Martin Liefhebber drawing of Fancye by Jaeger and Sutton
Painting commissions
1987 THE EYE OF THE OVAL a painting apx. 8 feet by 18 feet for Orlando, Florida, USA Cineplex Odeon Corporation of Sand Lake Seven Cinemas
Collections
The Smithsonian Museum of American Art
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston
The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, or MACBA)
The Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge, United Kingdom, The New Hall Art Collection
The Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Agnes Etherington Art Centre Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Canada Council Art Bank Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Tuna, 1977 and Penny Royal 1977.
Memorial University of Newfoundland Art Gallery Saint Johns, New Brunswick, Canada
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, (AGGV), Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Selected bibliography
Karen Wilkin Certain Traditions: Recent British and Canadian Art, 1978
Karen Wilkin Carol Sutton, ARTS Magazine, December 1979
Kenworth Moffett The New Generation: A Curator's Choice, exhibition catalogue essay, illustrated, André Emmerich Gallery, New York
Karen Wilkin Selections from The Westburne Collection, The Edmonton Art Gallery, catalogue 1982
James Clark The Problem of Fundamental Ontology, Volume III, Limits Book Company, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Published 1973
Terry Fenton Feature Article: Canadians, Carol Sutton, Update, Volume 3, No. 1, January/February 1982, The Edmonton Art Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
David Burnett & Marilyn Schiff illustrated, Contemporary Canadian Art, Co-published by Hurtig & Art Gallery of Ontario
Walter Darby Bannard- Carol Sutton's New Paintings- The Water Spiral Series, exhibition catalogue essay, Gallery One, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
David Burnett Cineplex Odeon The First Ten Years- A Celebration of Contemporary Canadian Art, ISBN 0-9693835-0-9
Donna Lypchuk Carol Sutton: Eye Of The Vortex, The Silhouette-Grill-Balcony Paintings, cover and feature article, Artpost 33, Summer, 1989
Lypchuk, Donna, Exhibition essay 'A Spanner in The Works - Ethos and Spirituality in Abstract Painting' for show at Oakham House, Ryerson University, by Terrance Sulymko Fine Art, November 1990