”Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” – Chief Seattle
WELCOME TO CMKC STUDIO!
My name is Carolyn Clark – CMKC. (The M is Marie and the K is Katherine) After having lived all around the United States as well as overseas as a Military Brat, I followed music to Nashville where I met my husband, Denny Elliott.
Kingston Springs, Tennessee is our home ….. as well as home to all of the wildlife you see on these pages. Every photo on these pages reflects friends who live predominantly in our backyard, but I have captured a few in the front yard as well!
I left the world of corporate law and law firms a few years ago after 30 years …….. Best. Life. Move. Ever. My husband gave me a SLR camera as a diversion while I contemplated the next chapter. The diversion soon transformed into a creative outlet and the birds and other wild creatures have now become my collective muse.
We have a 24/7 diner on our back deck and during the last few years, over 40 bird species have landed on and in our feeders, stopped by for a drink, or sat waiting on the rails and deck posts for a vacant seat …. and all have ended up posing for posterity. Along with the birds who visit us every day, raccoons also stop by to say hey as do opossums, deer, chipmunks, squirrels, turtles and an occasional skunk or armadillo.
There are 12 individual pages of bird and animal species as well as pages of paintings, tactical law enforcement photographs, and an autobiographical pictorial – each page is chock full of photos and the sound of mornings at our home. I hope you enjoy getting to know all of my friends as much as I enjoy being with them every day.
So please, sit back for about 10 minutes, relax, scroll through the pages and enter the calm.
Email: cmkclark@bellsouth.net
PHOTOGRAPHS
Every one of the wildlife photographs on this website depicts birds and mammals living in and around our front and backyard in Kingston Springs, Tennessee. I don’t have to travel at all. I just have to look out the back windows and have the camera ready…… and the feeders full! Mid-mornings and late afternoons seem to be the best time to take photos as the manner in which the sun moves across the sky provides an incredible variety of natural lighting during these hours. But then again, I like the cloudy day photos as well!
PAINTINGS
I was inspired by Edithe Beutler whose colorized photograph of a hibiscus I found in the attic of an old house I rented in Seattle years ago. Perhaps it was the lighting or fuzzy focus, but some of my photographs struck me as looking more like watercolors than photos, so I thought I would add color and texture with both acrylic and oil paint and create paintings. I love colorizing old sepia toned photographs and family portraits.