Painting Expressive Landscapes

Carole was brought up in a rural area of North Staffordshire. She moved South to study for her degree and post graduate qualifications at Central St. Martin's School of Art and subsequently freelanced as a book illustrator for major London Publishers. She worked on a wide variety of commissions and her illustrations are published worldwide. Carole is a mixed media painter and art tutor, working from her studio in Laddingford, Kent, she exhibits in London and the South East of England. Her paintings are driven by strong feelings about ecology and man's impact on the environment; her desire is to elevate nature's case and celebrate meadows and wild places. She has visited the Kent Wildlife reserve, Marden Meadow regularly for over thirty years, which is a rare, unimproved hay meadow connecting us back to a pre-industrial past. Distillation of these observations, memory and imagination form the basis of many of her landscapes. While inspired by all nature she particularly enjoys weedy patches and the fragility of weathered plants, which retain a kind of nobility in their structure even in their dry, decaying state. Carole is a mixed media painter with a first love of watercolour. She is experimental, combining media, resist techniques and a variety of mark making. In the last few years Carole has brought digital art into her practice and is frequently re-inspired by the new colour combinations or abstractions achieved.