We are delighted to be exhibiting Caroline's paintings in our Autumn Exhibition of English Artists

Having held many exhibitions in London’s galleries since 1986,  artist Caroline Deane is now drawing attention from Beijing’s art world. A self-confessed classically influenced contemporary artist, Caroline received a Masters degree from the Byam Shaw School of Art. She has also trained in India and at China’s Academy of Fine Arts. Since marrying Chinese artist Qu Lei lei in the 1990s, the London-based artist has frequently visited China and her paintings have been influenced by Chinese philosophy and painting techniques. Her recent solo exhibition at the Liliji Art Gallery in a busy commercial area of Beijing was a great success and her paintings have begun to be collected by Chinese art connoisseurs. The inspiration for her still lifes originally came from an old object in her mother-in-law’s kitchen and this idea of taking an object steeped in history as the starting point of a painting has never left her.

Click here for interview with Caroline Deane

Artists Statement:

I graduated from among other establishments the British School in Rome, Beijing’s Central Academy of Art and London’s Byam Shaw School of Art. In recent years I have been exhibiting my work both in China and in London .  I have also been exhibited regularly with several central London art galleries as well as being featured annually in national art fairs both in and outside of London since 2002.

As an artist I describe myself as a classically influenced contemporary artist. In my figure sketches I also draw inspiration from ancient Chinese philosophy and painting, deriving more the ideas behind traditional oriental painting than the painting itself.

During my most recent year in Beijing, in 2009/10, I found myself without a model and with only the city around me - and with it the constant supply of exquisite light.  This led naturally and fortuitously from a long phase doing mainly drawing to my still life oil series which I am still doing now.

I paint now largely on linen or a pre prepared coloured surface; its voice always leaking through and sometimes contributing to the statement. I was lucky in that my mother in law’s kitchen was always full of such interesting things - old match boxes, bent scissors, aluminium bowls dating back to the 1950s or fascinating items from the Cultural Revolution. Now back in London I am still on the look out for things that I can respond to, mostly from Portobello market. Ultimately these paintings constitute layers of time, observation of colour mixed and mixed until it is right, chasing the light to tell a consistent story regardless of light and time.

In these works I draw my inspirations from numerous sources including Cezanne, Vuillard Bonnard, the later still life series of  Manet and sometimes Van Gogh. These paintings, despite the subjects being so modest, had a monumental quality.

I like to think of my paintings as layers of moments in time as mark is applied over mark, persistently again and again until I think it is right. In some of these works I wanted to take them to an extreme, to deliberately over work them, scrape them off and then bring them back again a little bit like Lucien Freud   Some of them on the other hand I just wanted them to just chase the time and the light and try to catch the fleeting moment .

My other major preoccupation with my work has always been initially with the drawing surface and then the painting surface and the role it has to play- its texture, colour, shape and how it links in and communicates with the media.  I love, as with Constable’s sketches and Lautrec, how the colour of the surface is leaking, sometimes piercing through.  This idea is reflected in the Oriental approach where, for example, everything is painted – rocks, trees, earth – except the central theme, such as a waterfall, where just the paper creates the form.  It is intrinsically nothingness or space yet it still has a voice, makes a statement and may be leaves the viewer to wonder what could have been said. I found if I filled them all up, the images had a tendency to become claustrophobic and conventional. I believe such spaces allow the picture to breathe lending to it a sense of freedom and informality- the qualities you find in drawing. My drawing is always the foundation of my work and I find now that if I stop, my special invention goes dead.

Drawings

Bonnard once said “ I have sent myself back to school .. I am restarting my studies from the beginning , from ABC…so I will have to study drawing . I draw all the time .” Feeling he wanted to clear the decks and start again he threw away his camera. Perhaps in the same sense these drawings simply came from this desire for simplicity and honesty.

 Now back in my London studio I am alternating between oil painting and figure drawing.

Ultimately I believe we have two parts to our brain; the emotional and the spiritual, and the intelligent and the structural. My challenge is to express myself with both these sides simultaneously  - to sometimes go beyond the drawing or the painting and make a piece of art with conscious emphasis and de-emphasis, points of impact, points of subtlety, good pictorial design - and above all meaning what I say intelligently and honestly.