Carolyn Mary Kleefeld is an American author, poet, and visual artist. Kleefeld is the author of ten books, has a line of fine art cards, and has had numerous gallery and museum awards and exhibitions between 1981 and the present, in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major cities. Since 1981, Ms. Kleefeld has created an extensive and diverse body of paintings and drawings, ranging in style from romantic figurative to abstract. In addition to being featured in art magazines and textbooks, her art can be found on book covers, and in the personal collections of Ted Turner, the late Laura Archera Huxley, and many others, as well as at the United Nations, and in hospitals, galleries and museums throughout the world.
Kleefeld was born in Catford, England, and moved to Southern California at the age of four, growing up in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, with a later move to Malibu. She currently lives on a cliffside mountaintop in Big Sur, California.
Kleefeld attended UCLA from 1974 to 1978, studying art and psychology. Her first book, a collection of poetry and philosophical aphorisms entitled Climates of the Mind, was published in 1979 by The Horse and Bird Press.
Kleefeld’s second and third books...Satan Sleeps with the Holy: Word Paintings and Lovers in Evolution...are also poetry collections that were published by The Horse and Bird Press, in 1982 and 1983 respectively. Kleefeld’s Climates of the Mind was translated into Braille by the Library of Congress.
Kleefeld's first one-woman exhibit and poetry reading was at the Gallerie Illuminati in Santa Monica, California in 1990, although she had several dozen juried exhibitions prior to this. From 1990 to the present Kleefeld has had numerous gallery and museum showings.
Some of the galleries that have exhibited Kleefeld’s work include: the National Arts Center in New York City, New York, the Bernice Steiner Gallery in Bal Harbour, Florida, the Alvarado Gallery in Monterey, California, the Stage Gallery in Merrick, New York, the Women’s Caucus for the Arts at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Art 21 Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Kleefeld’s art appeared on the back cover of Dr. Timothy Leary's book Design for Dying. Her art was on the front covers of The Spiritual Emergence Newsletter, The MAPS Bulletin, Skyline Magazine, and the Bodhi Tree Bookstore’s 30th Anniversary issue of their semiannual newsletter, as well as being featured on the cover of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute’s annual holiday card. Kleefeld won the Judge’s Award for Excellence at the John Nichols Gallery in Santa Paula, California, and the Curatorial Committee's Special Mention for Excellence Award at the Stage Gallery in Merrick, New York. Her painting, “Reality in the Window Frames of Mind", was auctioned at Christie’s as part of Dr. Timothy Leary memorabilia estate sale.
Kleefeld has also had a number of museum exhibits. In 1994, she was part of a group exhibition at the Downey Museum of Art in Downey, California, and in 1999 she had an exhibit at the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, Long Island, New York. In 2001 Kleefeld had a solo retrospective at the Stowitts Museum & Library in Pacific Grove, California entitled “Parallel Universes: Visions for the 21st Century”. In 2008, Kleefeld was given a retrospective exhibition of her paintings and drawings entitled “Visions from Big Sur” at Pepperdine University’s Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art in Malibu, California. A catalog of this exhibit entitled Carolyn Mary Kleefeld: Visions from Big Sur was published by Pepperdine University.
In 1990, Atoms Mirror Atoms, Inc. published two collections of Kleefeld’s poetry and paintings, entitled Songs of Ecstasy: Volume 1 and Songs of Ecstasy: Volume 2, to commemorate her solo exhibition at the Gallerie Illuminati.
In 1993, an interview with Kleefeld appeared in David Jay Brown and Rebecca McClen Novick’s book Mavericks of the Mind. Kleefeld also appeared (along with the late Laura Archera Huxley, Dr. Timothy Leary, Dr. Oscar Janiger, Dr. John Lilly, and others) in the ‘Mavericks of the Mind’ round-table conferences that were hosted by Brown and Novick at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1993 and at UCLA in 1994.
In 1998, Merrill-West Publishing published Kleefeld’s book The Alchemy of Possibility: Reinventing Your Personal Mythology. This volume, which includes a foreword by Laura Archera Huxley, is a collection of poetry, prose, paintings and drawings and serves as an oracular tool, like the Tarot or the I Ching.
Kleefeld worked with close collaborator, poet-in-residence and artist David Wayne Dunn to create an illustrated collection of love poems, Kissing Darkness: Love Poems and Art, which was published by RiverWood Books (an imprint of White Cloud Press, a publisher of Kahlil Gibran) in 2003.
Kleefeld’s short prose story, “Already Alone”, was the winner of the Monterey County Weekly Short Story Contest in 2006, and two of her other stories won honorable mention. Kleefeld’s poem “What Seekers Strive for...” won honorable mention in a poetry contest at the Beat Museum in San Francisco, California.
In 2008, Soul Seeds: Revelations & Drawings, a collection of Kleefeld’s aphorisms that address a broad range of universally experienced life challenges, and thirteen of her drawings, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in New York. A chapter from the book, entitled “Dimensional Perspectives”, was nominated for the 2008 Pushcart Prize, and a poem from Vagabond Dawns was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. The book contains a forward by the late Laura Archera Huxley, and a prologue by Deanna McKinstry-Edwards, Ph.D.
Vagabond Dawns: includes a CD of Carolyn reciting some of the poems... published by Cross-Cultural Communications, New York, Summer of 2009. (ISBN 978-0-89304-186-1)
Soul Seeds: Revelations & Drawings, with a Foreword by Laura Archera Huxley, Cross-Cultural Communications, New York, 2008. (ISBN 978-0-89304-089-5)
Carolyn Mary Kleefeld: Visions from Big Sur, text by Michael Zakian, Ph.D., artwork by Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Frederick R Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, 2008. (ISBN 1-882-705-07-6)
Kissing Darkness: Love Poems and Art, co-authored with David Wayne Dunn, with a Foreword by Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, RiverWood Books, Ashland, Oregon, 2003. (ISBN 1-883-991-83-8)
The Alchemy of Possibility: Reinventing Your Personal Mythology, with a Foreword by Laura Archera Huxley, Merrill-West Publishing, Carmel, California, 1998. (ISBN 1-886-708-03-7)
Songs of Ecstasy, Volume I (Poetry and art), Atoms Mirror Atoms, Inc., Carmel, California, 1990.
Songs of Ecstasy, Volume II (Special edition poetry), Atoms Mirror Atoms, Inc., Carmel, California, 1990.
Lovers in Evolution, The Horse & Bird Press, Los Angeles, California, 1983. (ISBN 09602214-0-9)
Satan Sleeps with the Holy: Word Paintings, with a Foreword by Carl A. Faber, Ph.D., The Horse & Bird Press, Los Angeles, California, 1982. (ISBN 0-9602214-8-4)
Climates of the Mind, with a Foreword by Carl A. Faber, Ph.D., The Horse & Bird Press, Los Angeles, California, 1979, in 4th printing. (ISBN 0-9602214-2-5)
Mavericks of the Mind 2, Sound Photosynthesis, Mill Valley, California, 1994. Featured at UCLA with Dr. Timothy Leary, Laura Archera Huxley, Dr. John Lilly and other notables.
Mavericks of the Mind, Sound Photosynthesis, Mill Valley, California, 1993. Featured at UC Santa Cruz with Dr. Robert Anton Wilson, Dr. Stephen La Berge, Dr. Ralph Abraham and other notables.
