Carol Ann Minarick was born in Passaic, NJ on March 2, 1942 and lived in Garfield and East Paterson before moving to Hartley, DE. She graduated from the University of Delaware with a degree in Political Science in 1964. During her time there, she took a junior year abroad at the American University of Beirut where she studied under and was influenced by Charles Malik, a Lebanese academic, diplomat, and philosopher. There Carol developed her joy of and contagious energy for questioning the status quo.

Carol studied at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington DC, where she became fascinated with the painting discipline known as sumi-e, where spareness, spontaneity, and original response to the subject are characteristic of the art. These principles guided her work in painting, sculpture, and installations. “It is a powerful reminder that we need to remain in the present, even while savoring or delving into the past,” she said.

Carol lived and worked in Oak Ridge, TN from 1978 through 2001. There she taught art and experimental watercolor workshops, curated exhibitions at the Children’s Museum, and displayed her work at the Knoxville Museum of Art. During this time, she was named a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Life Fellow.

Moving to Easton, MD in 2001, Carol served as a Trustee at the Academy Art Museum, where she was a member of the Exhibitions and Permanent Collection committees. She collaborated in institutional and organized art events to highlight the injustices inherent in migration and human trafficking. Never shying away from controversy, her art and activism was always informed by her education and upbringing.

A prolific painter and artist, Carol had over 20 solo exhibitions of her work including gallery shows at Muse (Philadelphia, PA), Guilford College (Greensboro, NC), Bertha Urdang Gallery (New York, NY), and, most recently, the Academy Art Museum (Easton, MD) with ​Beowulf: A Series is Not a Series​ in 2015. Throughout her career, she collaborated with other like-minded artists, exhibiting works in numerous group installations including at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), with the Artists for Syrian Relief (Easton, MD), and at the Adkin’s Arboretum (Ridgley, MD), where her award-winning work currently can be seen. Her major collaborative works, “Lost Synagogues of the Holocaust,” serve as Torah Mantels in the Jewish Chapel at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

Carol’s elegantly spare surface compositions often address complex moral and historical questions; time spent with her work is time spent in dialog with your own conscience and heart.

Throughout her life, Carol worked to make the world around her a better place, helping the community through her vision and her art. She was never idle in the face of the oppressive or the banal, and she never backed down from a good argument. She was driven by the words of William Blake “I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”