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"Untitled" © Jack Radcliffe

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"This is the most recent photograph of Carole Jean with her neighbor, Miss.Lee.

I first photographed Carole Jean in the 1970s, when she lived in a primitive $35-a-month tenant farmhouse with her son and boyfriend. They were a self-sufficient household. There was an enormous vegetable garden for food, and they heated with wood. Carole Jean supported herself and her son, and without assistance from her family, earned an MFA.

Carole Jean lived the idyllic life of an artist; she painted, created mixed-media pieces, and photographed. Her paintings were colorful and fanciful, images inspired by her world travels, particularly to Oaxaca, Mexico. Her black and white and hand-colored photographs of elaborately costumed local children would have made Lewis Carroll envious.

Despite a series of adversities, which include a recent bout with cancer and a fire where most of her art was destroyed, Carole Jean is finally settled into her own house in Baltimore. She is creating new paintings and mixed-media pieces, and is returning to photography with her new digital camera."