Puzzling Through Carolyn Cook-Fauble’s “It’s a Puzzle”

By Michelle Haynes, CACB Board Member & Artist

At CACB’s September Community Art Contest, Carolyn Cook-Fauble’s “Moons of Escher” took Best of Show. This large and precise piece features sacred geometry and religious iconography as well as M.C. Escher-style geometric complexity and impossible perspectives. A month later, Carolyn featured “It’s a Puzzle” for CACB’s October show. While equally precise, the piece is wildly intriguing to look at, seeming at once cosmic and microscopic in scale.

From across the room, the painting is bold and graphic, but once you’re directly in front of it, detailed orbs reveal themselves. And then your eye picks out more and more details. How did all those details get in there? Why is there a grinning skull, a slinking wolf, and that spider dropping through the universe on its cosmic thread?! It’s just too fun, and so I contacted Carolyn to learn more about it.

Diversity Through Experimentation

I quickly felt the painter’s passion for art. Carolyn taught art in public schools for over three decades — four years in Illinois and 31 in Texas — retiring in 2006 as department chair at Flower Mound High School. (“We did get to Texas as soon as we could,” she says!) Her teaching career shaped her artistic approach in practical ways. “Students often sat in my classes for three and four years at a stretch,” she explained. “Boredom was not an option.” To keep her students involved in their art journey, she constantly created new developmental approaches for teaching the same basics of art and design.

The diversity in her own work and frequent experimentation kept the creative process fresh for the students, and alive for Carolyn, as well. That approach continues today: “Recent pieces have been experimental,” she said. “Some things just pop in my head.” Then she joked, “And there’s a lot of talking in my head.”

How “It’s a Puzzle” Came Together

That experimentation is part of what led to the final design of “It’s a Puzzle.” Carolyn started the painting with kids and Halloween in mind. As her brush worked circles into the canvas, one discovery led to another playful addition, almost the way you might briefly see defined images in the clouds before the clouds shift. In the curves of the brush strokes, the artist saw a little skull. She described the moment as a “happy accident.”

“Oh, how fun would it be to have more little interesting things in here?” she recalls thinking. “It lent itself to the circular shapes I was already doing.” 

Since the painting is so detailed and precise, I was truly surprised to learn that the hidden wolf, skull, and spider weren’t meticulously planned symbolic elements. Now, as an observer of the painting, knowing that these creatures emerged organically from the creative process itself and sort of “invited” themselves in makes the work feel even more alive.

Abstract vs. Surreal

In our conversation, I referred to “It’s a Puzzle” as abstract, and then surreal, casually alternating the terms, the way many of us do when we’re talking about art that isn’t straightforward realism. Carolyn gently clarified something I hadn’t quite understood.

“Jackson Pollock is abstract,” she explained. “You can’t recognize anything. That’s the academic definition of abstract.” However, surreal art takes common things and puts them in unusual situations. Think Salvador Dali’s clocks in The Persistence of Time (1931). 

“My paintings are hard to describe. There’s no defined thing. But surreal and abstract are different.” 

In “It’s a Puzzle,” the mischievous details are specific items arranged in ways that don’t follow the usual rules, pushing the piece toward surreal rather than abstract.

The Joy of Painting

As much fun as I had puzzling through “It’s a Puzzle,” it was delightful to learn that the artist had fun, too. She shared her philosophy on the creative process. “If your painting is not fun for you as an artist, it becomes drudgery. You should feel addicted when the painting starts coming together and think to yourself, ‘I think I’m in love with this painting.'”

This is work made by someone who loves the process. Yet, Carolyn noted another point. Surreal and abstract art may seem free and haphazard (cue dismissive snark: “My four-year-old could have painted that.”), but creating serious surreal or abstract works takes more maturity.

“Taking common things and putting them in an unusual situation, to open the possibilities more, that has to develop over time.”

A Conversational Education

One of the benefits of a community art center is accessibility — not just to art, but to artists themselves. And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll get to talk with the artist who made it. If you’re really intrigued by a piece, ask the gallery to forward your questions to the artist. Because sometimes the best art education happens in conversation, when someone with decades of experience generously shares not just their work, but their way of seeing the world.

Carolyn Cook-Fauble’s work is on display at the Creative Arts Center, Bonham, located at 200 W. 5th St. in Bonham, Texas. The center is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m.-noon. For more information, call 903-640-2196 or email Admin@CreativeArtsCenterBonham.org.