Cynthia von Buhler

Cynthia von Buhler
Born	Cynthia Carrozza 1965
Education	The Art Institute of Boston, United States of America; Richmond College, London, England
Known for	Painter, Sculptor, Illustrator, Author, Performer, Photographer, Playwright
Movement	Surrealist

Cynthia von Buhler a.k.a. Countess von Buhler, is an American artist, performer, playwright, and children's book author.

Von Buhler (born Cynthia Carrozza) was raised in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the middle child in an artistic family with six children. Of her childhood, she says "As soon as we could hold a scissor, we learned every kind of craft imaginable, and worked in three dimensions, not just two." Creative from the start, she created large-scale papier-mache floats for her hometown Halloween parades, and won her first art award while she was still in grammar school. Growing up in the Berkshires, surrounded by world-class theater, von Buhler staged, performed and sang in plays at school and camp. Her high school graduation was held at Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Von Buhler studied art and children's books at The Art Institute of Boston. After graduating she continued her studies at Richmond, The American International University in London.

In the mid-nineties, she and Adam Buhler a.k.a. Adam von Buhler bought a large purple Victorian house in the Allston neighborhood of Boston. She painted the walls in jewel tones with patterns of climbing vines. "It was a creative turning point for me. When I moved into my house, I needed art for the walls. So, I started making these paintings that were much different than the style I had been working in. That is when I decided not to make any artwork that I did not want to put on my wall." Von Buhler's three-dimensional paintings have been reproduced and featured in a diverse variety of books, magazines, and newspapers from Rolling Stone to The New Yorker. Her work has appeared in more than a thousand magazines, books, publications, billboards, and CDs. In 1995 she was interviewed about her art in Mary Magdalen: An Intimate Portrait on the Lifetime Network. The expose was narrated by Penelope Ann Miller and also featured interviews with Martin Scorsese and Arch Bishop Rembert Weakland. In addition, a von Buhler portrait of Mary Magdalen which had been commissioned by The New Yorker was featured in the show's introductory graphics. In 1998, she was hired by Viking Publishing to illustrate a children's book, Nicholas Nicholson's Little Girl in Red Dress With Cat and Dog. This book garnered von Buhler a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which praised the "imaginative debut" and her "distinct sense of time and place." A tarot deck based upon the writings of William Shakespeare, "The Shakespeare Oracle: Let the Bard Predict Your Future," written by A. Bronwyn Llewellyn, was illustrated by von Buhler and released in 2003. In 2004 von Buhler's portraits of Madonna and Jimi Hendrix accompanied essays by Britney Spears and John Mayer in the "50th Anniversary of Rock and Roll" issue of Rolling Stone. The painting of Jimi Hendrix was built with a guitar as the singer's spine and the piece was set on fire. Both paintings are now in the collection of Jann Wenner.

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