Caroline Smith - Featured Artist
Paintings
Caroline Smith is a our featured artist for July. Her wonderful vibrant work will be filling our window!
In Caroline's own words:
Since finishing my degree in Fine Art from Middlesex University I have been a practicing artist. My work is based in the landscape. I work mainly with oil paint on canvas, translating my responses to the environment into semi abstract works. I also work, teaching A level Fine Art at Varndean College, Brighton.
Living and working in the Southeast of England, my paintings are often about the local area. Walking in the Sussex landscape, I stop to draw and photograph the places that conjure a dreamlike quality for me and unlock a certain memory or feeling. Sometimes it might be a particular light in the sky or a coloured shadow across a path or even the fleeting movements of landscape passing by whilst driving that can create an emotional response to the environment.
Trying to capture the moments, which resonate for me, where the different elements of light, colour and shade come together in a way that can represent something new. I try to work quickly using intuitive marks in order to encourage this new image to emerge organically. Each piece, like a poem, is a tapestry of multiple experiences, inviting viewers to engage with the extraordinary found in the ordinary. Sometimes it is a very domestic or familiar place when ideas and visual inspiration occur. It is interesting to stop and reflect and observe, whilst in the midst of other activities to find beauty and significance in the overlooked. This practice of transforming the mundane into the extraordinary is central to my artistic vision, encouraging a deeper appreciation for the world around us.
Travelling and experiencing the world through different physical landscapes is also a source of inspiration. My recent work based on a trip to Costa Rica gave me fleeting impressions of the place, based on dark, dense undergrowth with flashes of colour, inhabited by the many sounds and movement of animals and birds.