Painter Caroline Carney is out in L.A. now, but Provincetown is still on her mind.

She moved out west with her partner, Sinan Papić, whose experience of living in the U.S. was limited to Provincetown. They both wanted to live in a big city. “I think we’re trying to have it all,” says Carney. “We want to stay connected to Provincetown.”

Carney moved to Provincetown during the pandemic summer of 2020, but it wasn’t her first time on the Outer Cape. As a kid, she visited Wellfleet for a couple of weeks each summer. When she saw a posting for a job at the Canteen, she jumped on it. They offered housing, and she saw it as an opportunity to work and paint and get out of Philadelphia.

Carney stayed in Provincetown for four years. In addition to her restaurant job (she still remembers everyone’s order), she painted in her room in the shared living space provided for Canteen staff on Nelson Avenue. Later, she had a studio at the Commons, which she learned about from painter Pete Hocking.

A family friend gave her a huge stack of paper. She’d tack it up, prime it, and paint with oils. Often, she painted from a folding easel that she carried around with her.

In her exhibition at Zone 7a in Provincetown, opening this week, Carney is showing small-scale landscape paintings alongside the work of Cole Cook (see page C4). Her paintings depict scenes of Provincetown, like the wharf at night or an alleyway where industry and the sea both come into view.

The works evoke a sense of movement: quick, gestural marks moving across wet surfaces. The casual, open attitude of Carney’s paintings also capture a certain sense of ease with which she moves through the world, unafraid of new experiences and places.

Carney was born in Boston, but her family moved around the country. She grew up mostly in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 with a B.A. in anthropology and a concentration in medicine. In Philadelphia, she worked in medical research, doing patient interviews and helping with studies related to kidney research and hospital readmission.

She always painted but started taking it more seriously after enrolling in continuing education classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She continued pursuing the practice, painting in her bedroom.

Now, she works for an L.A. production company called Draulhaus in addition to a bunch of side gigs. She paints on the shared outdoor patio in her apartment building, still working on translating the “natural beauty of Provincetown and its small-town architecture” into paint. During the years that Carney lived here, she collected the images from which she works: digital and film photographs, sketches, and watercolors.

In Squid Fishing, a small painting of MacMillan Pier at night, Carney uses oil paint generously. She lays on the paint with a wide brush for the black sky. The rigging of the fishing boats is rendered with smaller brushes, each mark a visceral record.

Carney became interested in nocturnes after her gallerist at BBLG Gallery in Smithtown, Long Island issued a prompt for a nighttime painting show. She continued with the theme in a series of paintings of MacMillan Pier.

“It’s magical to walk at night by the water— everything is just glowing,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to capture the glow.”

Carney names Wayne Thiebaud and Maureen Gallace as influences, which is evident in her juicy surfaces and high-key palette. She also mentions Rackstraw Downes, a painter known for his panoramic landscapes of industrial spaces.

In I Can Still Feel the Sunshine, Carney paints an alley leading to Flyer’s Boat Launch. She was drawn to this scene because of its pedestrian, workaday quality. The water at the end of the alley, along with the strong light illuminating a pair of propane tanks and bleaching the walkway, make it clear this is a fishing village.

Ocean Through the Pines is a view from the Provincetown dunes. Carney would often observe this landscape from the outlook at the Provincetown visitors center, admiring the dips in the dunes. She associates this place with the smell of pine and sunlight — even if it’s cold. Carney worked from memory and invented references while developing this painting, but it started with running through the dunes.

Like many of her paintings, this one is situated in her experience of moving through places. “They’re all informed by walking and biking around town at odd hours during quiet moments,” she says.

‘Memories of the Sea’

The event: An exhibit of paintings by Caroline Carney and sculptures by Cole Cook
The time: Nov. 21 to 27; opening reception Friday, Nov. 22, 4 to 6 p.m.
The place: Zone 7a Gallery & Books, 437 Commercial St., Provincetown
The cost: Free