Carroll "The Paintbrush Poet"

"I never went to art school.

I'm an American artist merging old and new art the old-fashioned way, using Series 7 sable paintbrushes. I love, love, love sports!

I love staying fit & doing negative splits

almost more than I do painting.

"I began drawing meticulously as a 4½ y/o about Christmas after my older sister perished in 1955 on Rebel Hill in Conshohocken, suburban Philly. Watercolor helped me work through it at 43 y/o - WCs are one of the last unregulated prestigious luxury items you can own.

Surprise!!!

"After a fundraiser a businessman told me,

'This [Carroll] will hang between my 2 Picassos and a Chagall on my ranch.' You should have watched him giddily bidding against himself, as if it was Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi.

I didn't see that coming, not even in my dreams. It was like a childhood Christmas morning"!

"I see what others do not see. A Yale MFA (Art History), who was a Yale museum curator, called me 'Genius' and "Tiger" with a higher IQ than her 160. Who knows. Picasso was 175.

"The idea that the harder you work, the better you’re going to be is just garbage.

The greatest improvement is

made by the man or woman who

works most intelligently".

- Bill Bowerman, University of Oregon Track & Field Head Coach,

Co-founder, Nike. Carroll wore thirteen pairs of Waffle Racers annually

changing to a new pair every 250 miles and wore his Nikes in Spain

as he studied with the celebrated international artist Alcaraz.

Carroll is a "Pre" fan.

"I loved poking around our woodland stream,

canoeing the Pine Barrens, Boundary Waters, birding, running Valley Forge NP, cycling inland Maine, backpacking the Appalachian Trail and running Yosemite, ... Track and road bicycle racing up and down the East Coast, running 100s and ladders on the track, and keeping my breathing relaxed and HR very, very low. Later, it all benefitted my ability to paint".

"I was a Principal Investigator at The Academy of Natural Sciences (Pre-dated the Smithsonian and the Franklin Institute). I wore jeans, a t-shirt and running shoes when I interviewed with the Harvard PhD Section Leader. I was dazzled by the busloads of kids buzzing our exhibits and Moore art students drawing our panoramas. I left the Academy wanting to help people to love themselves and as a result take better care of our environment.

"Dagny leaned back in her chair. The short sentence was a shock. It was not merely relief: it was the sudden realization that nothing else was necessary to guarantee that it would be done; she needed no proofs, no questions, no explanations; a complex problem could rest safely on three syllables pronounced by a man who knew what he was saying".

- Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

"I'll never forget the experience of visiting Dr. Barnes home and witnessing his cherry-picked collection. I love Homer's, Marin's, John Singer Sargent's, Audubon's, O'Keeffe's, Rockwell's, and Edward Hopper's Cape Cod, watercolors ---

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India was an avid watercolorist.

She used Series 7s.

"You wouldn't believe the story of how I learned to paint clouds! So too, the big dog story, the sunflowers, be an artist in life, and roped in from above. All I really wanted is to be understood. Art taught me to see.

"We dined at a nice Cedar Springs restaurant. I showed Alcaraz my Purple Thistles. 'Come to Spain and I'll teach you to do what I do.' I was the first person ever allowed into his atelier.

Alcaraz taught me to paint one-on-one.

I was told to leave my Prismacolors stateside.

"The art on your walls shapes your empathy, creativity and critical seeing. Art, science, sports

and confident proof can and do coexist.

"He'd get that walk goin' and that blond hair floppin' and you knew you were gonna be in for a long, long night". - Magic Johnson,

Los Angeles Lakers about Larry Bird

"I wear jeans, a T-shirt and running shoes;

Heck, that's the way I met General Hugh G. Robinson (MIT and USMA civil engineer) who became my weekly mentor. That's the way I met Four-star General Tommy Franks USA (Ret), commander of U.S. forces in a 25-country region. General Tommy Franks penned the foreword to my 1st journal, Ode to Joy., introduced by a Country Western Hall of Fame and CGMA Award Winning guitarist, singer-songwriter - Produced by recording artist, multi-Grammy and Dove Winner, Gary S. Paxton of Branson, Missouri, USA. I sent a 1st Edition to Serene Majesty The King of Spain and got an appreciative letter 9 days later, with a courtesy translation and cover letter from the Spanish Ambassador in Washington, D.C. GEN Franks, FMR USCENTCOM commander, gave me a personal introduction to the President of the United States. Arts patron, Kitsy Westmoreland had her son take her picture with me at a black tie aboard the Queen Mary, amidst 40 MOHs, where a Knight Commander, Knights of Malta, who reported to the Pope, invited me to join his cadre of Americans Reagan and Carter, Soviet/Russian Gorbachev and some South American presidents in his distinguished priory.

I declined.

"One of my mentors wrote the largest player contract the NFL had ever seen.

"At about 3 y/o I began collecting pennies,

nickels and dimes to help support two children orphaned when their doctor parents perished

in a private plane crash. I made 5,000 S/N lithos of 4 colored pencil drawings of beautiful north Arkansas and gifted them to hospital patients. Parkland President and CEO Ron J. Anderson, MD told me he envisioned my artwork in every public hospital nationwide. There were more.

"Otra vez". "Again". (He said)

- Don Fco. "Paco" Alcaraz

Carroll's favorite film is Miracle (2004, produced by Mark Ciardi, et al.

Another mentor was Ciardi's Brewers sinker-slider teammate.)

U.S.A.

"I was named in homage to our Carroll County next door neighbor, a signer of the Declaration of Independence (1776) - We sailed into Maryland on the Lydia from Burgundy, France - where Arches® Aquarelle, my favorite Bright White Cold Press is made. Our patriarch boarded the tall ship as Johannes Jacques Burgund and got off as Johan Jacob Burgoon.

One son enlisted under Gen. Washington.

Washington encamped on Rebel Hill on his frigid march to overwinter at Valley Forge.

(Where we lived. I learned to ride my English racing bicycle across the Matsonford Road in Calvary Cemetery when I was 7 y/o.).

"My older sister's name was Helen, and it was a Brazilian heiress named Helena who arranged

for me to learn from Paco Alcaraz in Spain."