Artist of The Month November Caroline Darbro

My name is Caroline Darbro and I am a 26 year old artist and zookeeper. Raised on a goat farm in north Texas, I spent my childhood exploring the woods and creeks around our home. Collection and categorization was my art — jars full of nature cluttered my space, each one filled with anything I could get my hands on: persimmon seeds, unique sandstone chunks, cicada husks, tiny pinecones, feathers of dubious legality, etc. Trips to Galveston produced neat rows of lightning whelks to sit alongside the fossil shells I painstakingly picked from the limestone county roads. My mom and dad, a farming pharmacist and woodworking veterinarian, respectively — both creative and obsessive in their own right — supported my interests unconditionally, something for which I am constantly grateful.

I began my more “traditional” art career in middle/high school and won several awards and scholarships for my pen and ink pieces. I particularly loved drawing wading birds like cranes and ibis. I was fascinated with the way their long legs and necks, all angles and curves, could be manipulated in a composition. In college (Trinity University, San Antonio), I began experimenting with acrylic and charcoal. The permanence and presence of acrylic was a natural draw for my colorful, vaguely pop-art painting style. Charcoal surprised me; it was messy and fluid, but I fell in love with its additive/subtractive nature.

After graduating, I moved to Kansas to pursue zookeeping and eventually found myself at the Topeka Zoo working as the rainforest keeper. Now, I go to work every day and care for the birds that first inspired me. I live nearby and my house is filled with my collections, both natural and man-made, jars and displays filled with stones, bits of Americana, and shells of every kind. I take inspiration from it all and hope my art reflects back a fraction of the beauty I see every day.