Art & Soul

We often walk or drive past the Art & Soul Gallery and Frame Shop and admire the paintings in the windows. During the seasonal gallery walk in Carmel’s Arts and Design District, we stopped in to take a closer look.
There are many paintings here that I just love, especially a Fall scene that looks like a photograph if you squint your eyes ever so slightly while gazing at it. Our other favorites include a range of floral paintings rendered in bright and deep hues that are simply breathtaking. I would provide the artists’ names in this review, but I cannot pull them from memory and a trip to the gallery Web site did not prove helpful at all — for a gallery with the inventory this place has, the site is disappointingly sparse in terms of digital images. Speaking of inventory, I did think Art & Soul was something of a sensory overload — at least for the eyes — as its works are kind of crowded together. Now, I am not a professional and have no gallery experience to fall back on, but I do appreciate the airy layout of Evan Lurie much better. I find it tough to truly enjoy one painting I may be attracted to when another is creeping in and imposing itself from the periphery.
Also, we were not greeted in this store, either. We wanted to know more about the prices of the above-​mentioned paintings, but we didn’t want to interrupt the staff member’s noshing. Weird, going on a gallery walk and not being approached or spoken to kind of feels like more of a trip to the art MUSEUM.