Summer 2016 b

would take me around the grand rooms
full of enormous paintings by Gainsborough,
Van Dyke, Constable and Turner…
She knew all the stories behind the work,
some of them a bit scandalous - so that
was my introduction to art history… My
father’s favourite outing with my brother
and I was up over Hampstead Heath and
often we went into Kenwood House where
I was awestruck by Stubbs’ life-size painting
of the famous 18th century racehorse
“Whistlejacket” - now in the National Gallery
- I thought it was the most beautiful
and exciting painting I’d ever seen!
We used to visit my mother’s old tutor and
mentor, Rowland Hilder, who was a really
well-known and successful landscape
painter at that time and I loved his paintings,
mostly incredible watercolours of the
English countryside and estuaries… my
mother wouldn’t paint landscapes because
she said they just looked green to her - but
I saw all the colours of the world in the sky
and the sea.
My grandfather was an artist too but
passed away the year I was born. As well
as his paintings, he left us lovely plaster
casts of his hand and foot that he did in art
school. Rather disrespectfully, we used
Grandpa’s foot as a door stop for a time, but
now it’s up in proper pride of place on the
bookshelves, a very elegant foot it is too.
Sarah: This must have influenced you to
become an artist in your own right?
Caro: I studied art and design at college
but also took business courses as I was
really running my mother’s studio by the
time I was 18. She spent a lot of time in
America and had galleries representing
her over there, particularly New Orleans
where we later bought a house and split
our time between here and there. I was
her “gallery liaison” and took care of all
the design and admin for the business
side - all artists could do with someone to
do that couldn’t they!?! But as her career
slowed down a little bit (though she’s still
painting everyday at her easel!), I found
the time to finish my fine art degree and
start painting everyday too…so that was
about 6 years ago and I have really surprised
myself with how I’ve taken to being
in the studio creating art everyday and
learning so much about that creative process
and what I want to do with paint.
Sarah: Did you know straight away that
skies and seas were going to be your
theme?
Caro: No, not at all! I started off working
very big and very abstract on the floor of
an old converted barn in the countryside
nearby - throwing paint around and dribbling
it about like Jackson Pollock - a lot of
pieces I worked on from conception right
through to destruction - I think it was a
kind of cathartic process where it was
necessary to create and destroy, create
and destroy, to find my direction, or maybe
just to loosen up. But then one day after
about a year of this, making some pieces I
liked and a lot I didn’t, I found myself up
off the floor and working on an easel and
this particular piece which I was creating
with masses of paint and medium
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