Caroline was born and raised in Swindon and has always had a connection with the Wiltshire landscape. Her father was interested in ley lines and she remembers her first visit to Avebury as a child where they dowsed at the historic site, plotted lines on a map and considered the spirituality and sense of place of the landscape around them.

Swindon College of Art and Design, Euclid Street was where Caroline first began experimenting with a Columbian printing press, the very one used by Ken White and Gilbert O’Sullivan before her. She studied Ceramics at Camberwell College of Arts, although tuition from fine art department tutors became integral to her holistic making. Here within lifedrawing, printmaking, painting and ceramic sessions Caroline began exploring her sense of form and fluidity in her artwork.

Caroline then forged a career in teaching art and design with a PGCE and later a Masters in her first love, ceramics. She taught children between the ages of 11 and 18 and later, taught teachers how to teach art to pupils at Roehampton University.

Her art remained with her throughout this period and Caroline continued to work and improve, liking the idea of detail and abstract combined. She brought her background in ceramics into her fine art work to create added texture to the canvas, stretching the boundaries of contemporary art which is best seen through her Stonehenge and Avebury pieces. She utilises an unusual technique of modelling impasto on canvas, working paint into the incised lines created, similar to treatment with oxides in ceramics or ink in an etching process to create a texture which brings her pieces to life, adding a new dimension and spirituality to her work.

English Heritage has gone on to commission Caroline’s work after choosing her designs for their greetings cards. They also sell her prints and original paintings, and her works are in high demand by galleries who sell them all over the world.

Caroline is now a freelance artist who also likes to aid others; she helps to organise the Swindon Open Studios each year. One family from the US chose one of Caroline’s pieces that reminded them of a ‘typical’ English rose when they visited the UK for the first time in memory of their mother, who had always wanted to visit but never had the chance. She loves the idea that her work can provoke the senses, as hers are moved by the Wiltshire locations and subject matter that she responds to.

Her work is bold and lively; a physical effort in itself, flowing with a sensitivity and gentleness that draws the eye.

Caroline has also deposited examples of her student and early work with the Wiltshire & Swindon History Centre on full-time loan, one of a number of creators who have added their work to form ‘archive’ collections at the History Centre. These collections will be made available to all kinds of students to help them learn, study and create, and to grow as artists and researchers themselves.

Please contact localstudies@wiltshire.gov.uk for further details.

 

Julie Davis
Creative Wiltshire Project Lead