Artist Member – Vice President
Counting Sheep
6 x 6” folded, 6 x 36” flat
Double-sided accordion hand-made book with oil paint monotypes on colored mulberry paper, grosgrain ribbon
Counting More Sheep
6.25 x 6.25” folded, 6.25 x 37.5” flat
Double-sided accordion hand-made book with litho pencil monotypes on Rives BFK 300 gsm paper
Keep Counting Sheep
6 x 6” folded, 6 x 36” flat
Single-sided accordion hand-made book using one oil paint monotype on Rives BFK 300 gsm paper
Carolyn Letvin 
BIO
Carolyn Letvin, a resident of Plainville, Massachusetts, has exhibited in the New England area since 1990. She is an accomplished landscape and interior painter and also creates stylized sheep imagery. She has won many awards through the years, including the Top Award at the 18th Annual Faber Birren National Color Award Show, an Honorary Mention/Sakura Award from the United Pastelists of America/Oil Pastel Association in 2001, a second place in the 2014 Blanche Ames National Juried Exhibition, and the prestigious Nancy T. Baldwin Drawing Award from Concord Art’s 2017 Members Juried 2 Exhibition. Currently, her work can be seen at Galatea Fine Art in Boston, MA, Twist Gallery in Lexington, MA, Hudson Art & Framing in Hudson, MA, and Gallery Wright in Wilmington, VT.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I’ve been painting Jacob sheep for 19 years. When I began, I had no idea that they would engage me as a visual subject for such a long time. As when I started painting them, I get a charge from the results of the combination of my hand, the medium and the subject. One thing that has evolved through the making of them is that I’ve mostly eliminated any identifiable background. The flat color background accentuates the negative space of the composition, which the sheeps’ horns, legs and body positions create in endless ways.
Sheep are often one of the first images we see in our lives. Think of all the nursery rhymes and children’s stories that involve or are about sheep. One of my very first memories is of painted wooden cut-outs of Little Bo Peep and her sheep that my mother had hanging above my crib. To this day I can envision that room and how that “art” was hung. I believe that that formative vision is why these alluring creatures became my muse.
The books that I made using sheep imagery seemed a natural way to expand my body of work on the subject. I had made my first book in art school, and with my love of crafts, the process and results were something I yearned to return to. A few years back, I had an opportunity to re-learn some of the techniques, and shortly after that, the idea for my first sheep book came to me in an almost complete form. Then two more came into my head right after that, which anchored my excitement for the process and product. Now that I’ve become a member of NEBA, I hope that I’ll be inspired to make many more artist books with a variety of subject matter.