A Painter’s Paradise
Spacious Basement Is Creative Retreat at Artist’s Crestline Home
By Laura McAlister
Journal Editor
When choosing a house, most couples look for a fabulous kitchen or grand master suite and bath, but not Carolyn Goldsmith. It was actually the basement of her home that won her over.
Carolyn and husband Rusty have lived in their Crestline home for about four years. While the main level of the house, with an open floor plan and lots of windows and hardwood floors, is great for entertaining and relaxing, it’s the basement of the house where Carolyn feels most at home.
Carolyn is an artist. She’s most known for her colorful acrylic faceless figure paintings and abstracts.
Her work can be found in several local galleries, including the Larry Atchison Gallery in Mountain Brook and the Monty Stable Gallery in Homewood. Her paintings are also in galleries in Georgia, North Carolina and Florida and are displayed in office buildings and hotels throughout the Southeast.
Just as Carolyn’s paintings are elegant yet whimsical, so is her home.
When the Goldsmiths decided to return to Birmingham after living in Houston, Carolyn wanted a space fit for painting, and lots of it.
That’s just what she got in her Crestline home.
“We chose this house because it had a great place for a studio,” Carolyn said, referring to the basement. “Rusty said once he saw this space he knew we were getting this house. This is my favorite place to be. Right here in this studio.”
Carolyn is right at home resting on a couch in the studio in paint-splattered clothes. The space is nothing fancy, but it’s just what the artist wanted. It’s got lots of space, high ceilings, and the modified garage door offers just the right amount of light.
“It’s just a really freeing space,” she said. “I feel like anything is possible here. Even though there’s light on only one side, it’s good, and that’s what you need, light and space.”
The space is filled with canvases of every size and still leaves room for Carolyn’s art library, an office and even a little area for her grandchildren to create their own works of art.
While hours could be spent browsing Carolyn’s paintings in the studio, the upstairs of the house is also something an art lover could get lost in.
In her home, Carolyn keeps the decor soft and neutral. She uses her own and others’ artwork to bring in punches of bright colors. The furnishings are mainly antiques and have been passed down through their families or purchased during the couple’s travels.
“We do have a lot of things that have been passed down, which are really some of my favorite pieces of furniture and artwork. Then we have a lot of stuff from our travels,” Carolyn said. “We have some very old pieces, but then right next to it is contemporary art.”
In the kitchen, where Carolyn and Rusty are known to serve up gourmet meals to family and friends, cookbooks by popular Birmingham chefs are surrounded by an antique tea caddy. A large, colorful bowl purchased by the couple while in Mexico is the centerpiece of the island.
The kitchen opens to the living and dining room, where over the mantel sits one of Carolyn’s signature abstract paintings. Its bright pops of blue, yellow and pink add a splash of color to the otherwise neutral room. The couple keeps the television hidden in an antique English linen chest inherited from Rusty’s family.
One of the more unique pieces in the living room is the coffee table. It’s another antique, this one inherited from Rusty’s cousin, who purchased it from New York artists Phillip and Kelvin LaVerne.
The LaVernes, a father-son team, began creating their pewter and bronze pieces in the 1950s, and looked at them as “functional sculptures” rather than furniture. Etched into the table top are ancient Chinese scenes that are covered in an iridescent film, or patinas, developed through an aging process. The slabs of metal were dipped into a sod and chemical mixture and left there about six weeks. Once they achieved the desired coloring, the metal was sealed in wax and refrigerated in sub-zero temperatures to freeze the hues into lasting brightness.
While the coffee table is used the way the artists intended – as a work of art and furniture – many of the Goldsmiths’ antiques are used in not so traditional ways. In the dining room, for example, an old family secretary’s desk is used to display china and crystal.
Carolyn said the dining room table came from an antique shop; before being transformed into a table it was supposedly flooring from a hotel in France. The long narrow table makes the perfect setting for gourmet dinner parties.
Colorful contemporary art leads the way up the stairs to the second story, where there is a library and office space for Rusty along with guest bedrooms for the couple’s grandchildren.
The master bedroom is on the main level of the house, and contains what Carolyn says might be her favorite piece of art in their home. It’s a signed Raoul Dufy (1877-1953) print. The artist worked primarily in watercolors and painted lively scenes of the French seaside. It’s a mainstay in the house.
As for her own paintings displayed in the house, Carolyn changes them out occasionally. And why not? There’s always something new to choose from just down the stairs in her basement studio.
