Clarence Carter (1904-2000)
Study for the Barnesville Post Office Mural, 1935
The work of Clarence Holbrook Carter (1904-2000) is deeply rooted in the Ohio River Valley town of Portsmouth, located in the southern part of the state across the border from Kentucky. By the thirties, he had achieved his distinctive realist style, a powerful combination of the bleak loneliness of Edward Hopper and the more emotionally charged imagery of Charles Burchfield. Strongly regional in character, his realism was both nostalgic and hallucinatory, grounded in a vernacular vision. Even when he left Ohio, his memories of his native state continued to inform his vision. Wherever he lived, he remained an independent thinker: “My expression of America has been shaped by its vigor and vitality, its peace and calm and the spell of its past.”
Carter sought support from the federal government, executing several murals. While Carter did not win the competition for Barnesville, Ohio, his 1935 entry portrays a typical theme. Pictured is a plane, a lighthouse, a train, and a structure that appears to be a new airplane terminal—all elements facilitating the efficient delivery of the mail. A postman wearing the gray-blue uniform of his profession and carrying a mail sack, concentrates on his task.
Between 1938 and 1944, Carter taught at Carnegie Tech. He found the city picturesque and full of character, but the smoke that inspired Gorson and Hailman made it, in his opinion “a miserable place to live.” He regarded it as “the most important indictment of capitalism that I know.” Wanting more time to devote to his painting, in 1944 he resigned his position, and moved to the quiet solitude of Bucks County, remaining there until 1948, when he settled in Milford, New Jersey, near the Delaware River.
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