Student Artist Profile: Carly Andrew
Carly Andrew '24 sits before her work in her studio in the Steel Plant. Photo by Lucy Baldino '25
Creation has always come naturally for studio art student Carly Andrew ‘24. With final works over 4 feet tall and wide, Andrew has thrown herself into every aspect of her work over the past four years in Marist College’s art department.
After attending an agricultural high school and not getting much exposure to art classes in her early years, having the opportunity to express herself through her work at Marist has strengthened her artistic abilities and allowed for more opportunities.
“My growth from creating art for assignments in classes to channeling that energy into what I want to say with this piece was the biggest and best jump for me,” said Andrew. “I never plan for inspiration to strike, but if something is really speaking to me, then I will pull all-nighters to get it done.”
Andrew’s most recent piece is an oil painting of a pair of legs on a 44 by 58 inch canvas, which she stated was completed in six days. “I’ve been taking a lot of low-quality digital camera photos, and I really like the certain aesthetic that they give, so I wanted to do a painting in that low contrast style,” said Andrew about the piece. “I think it was more the process of that piece that I really enjoyed, just the physical act of painting.”
After spending the summer of 2023 at the New York Academy of Art studying figure drawing, Andrew became interested in the human body.
“Before that experience, I worked a lot with things alluding to the figure, such as worn shoes or a smoking cigarette, things that showed there was a human there, but never focused solely on the anatomy of the person themselves,” said Andrew. “So for my senior thesis, I knew I wanted to work with the body, and I knew I wanted it to be me and some sort of intimate cropping.”
Andrew’s senior thesis project consisted of three large-scale oil paintings depicting a human lying in bed. “I learned a lot about intimacy and who we are as humans while creating these pieces. You know, we all sleep in a bed or someplace where we rest our head at night, so it's a very existential place on a big canvas”.
Now, Andrew is no stranger to larger pieces of work. Professors often encourage her to “go bigger. No matter how big your painting is, go bigger, go bigger,” she stated.
“The hardest part for me with bigger pieces is how to evenly spread my time throughout the whole thing. It’s very easy to focus a lot of attention on the details all in one corner and then neglect other places. On the other hand, with such a big canvas, the blown up size of the details become easier to deal with, such as something as small as an eyelash now becomes a massive brush stroke,” said Andrew.
After spring graduation, Andrew will be participating in an art residency in Colorado for the summer of 2024, and will be attending the New York Academy of Art soon after for a master's degree in painting and printmaking.