"Caroline Day's most recent solo exhibition at The View Gallery , ‘Everyone Blooms’, featured six new, original paintings, as well as three high quality, limited edition prints.
Caroline’s style is instantly recognisable – sculptural and with a generous use of paint in some parts, contrasted with an almost unfinished quality in others. Based on direct observation, her final compositions lean more towards abstract and impressionism while retaining a realistic feel – identifiable for what they are, while also conveying the sense of energy and ephemerality which exists in nature. Her works are high impact, with the smaller of the originals measuring a meter by a meter; but there is more to them than just the initial ‘wow’. Any visitor who allowed themselves even a small amount of time to view any of the works began noticing the details, and finding new aspects as their eyes moved across the canvas.

The original paintings focused on the artist’s love of roses, with David Austin varieties dominating. “I love the sculptural quality of David Austin roses’’ says Caroline. David Austin developed a passion for roses as a 20 something-year-old, and in 1961, he released his first rose, Constance Spry, for public sale. One philosophy that has long been rooted in the David Austin Roses business is the desire to cultivate a more beautiful rose – roses that would be unrivalled in both beauty and health; roses that would bloom beautifully with colours to captivate and scents you wish you could bottle up and wear like a treasured cologne.
Caroline explains, “As a visual artist, I am drawn to the big, beautiful, chalice shaped blooms, capturing and holding love and light. The vibrant English roses, many with multi-petalled heads, are a gorgeous dose of colour, charm and fragrance.” An additional benefit in the eyes of the artist is that the roses are not only named after famous characters from novels, but are also bee friendly!
Each artwork was clearly focused on one of the unique varieties of bloom. This resulted in the decision to include the individual descriptions of the roses which acted as inspiration as part of the interpretation in the Gallery, with information on scent through to heritage. Also included was the artist’s own thoughts and inspirations for her work, ranging from childhood memories of collecting rose petals, through to the importance of time in her work.
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Caroline’s art is heavily influenced by the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi. In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a view centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is described as appreciating beauty that is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. As such, some of those details which viewers of these works were able to pick up on were the dying leaves and flowers which the artist chose to retain in the images, rather than simply creating a beautiful depiction of flowers at their peak.
‘The passage of time is an important factor within my work, ephemerality, petals falling, flowers withering and dying. I hope the viewer connects in some way with the painting through the passage of time, intrigued by what came before and what will happen next.’

 

About the Artist
Caroline graduated with a First Class BA Hons Degree from Camberwell College of Arts in 1994 and went on to gain a MA with Distinction from Cardiff University in 1996. She taught in secondary and higher education for 15 years and worked as an art coordinator for the Royal Borough of Kingston. In 2008 she returned to her hometown in Wiltshire and began to practice and exhibit as a professional artist." Jennifer Allison, Gallery Manager, The View Gallery, 2024. 


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