Caroline Deane - Line, Light, Colour and Time

Caroline showed a passion for drawing at an early age and through several scholarships studied

both at the British School in Rome and the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. She continued her studies at Beijing’s Central Academy of Art learning Chinese drawing techniques that she employs today in her work. She has since taught those techniques at the V & A and Hampstead School of Art.

Caroline has been exhibiting successfully in London since the mid 1980s and has recently drawn attention from the Chinese art collecting community, recently showing a series of her still life works at the Liliji Art Gallery in Beijing. She has lectured  on contemporary British art at one of the leading art schools in China. Although now London based, Caroline frequently visits China and continues to be influenced by Chinese philosophy and painting techniques.

A self-confessed ‘classically influenced contemporary artist’, her practice is underpinned by a dedication to figure drawing from the model.  Although she has painted small scale still-life’s for decades, it was a period in Beijing in 2009/10 that a lack of figure model led her to look for more immediate inspiration in her surroundings. Her mother-in-law’s kitchen supplied that inspiration in abundance – old match boxes, bent scissors, aluminium bowls dating back to the 1950s or fascinating items from the Cultural Revolution, all appeared in paint.

That series has developed into the rich, colourful floral still life paintings in her current show.  Her oils, largely on linen and prepared coloured surfaces combine the Chinese and European traditions in perfect harmony.  At first glance the compositions are beautifully crafted classical still-lifes, however Caroline prefers to leave much of the background a void, a space on the canvas that for her creates a dialogue between the central objects and the clarity of the unpainted surface.

She tells us ‘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’

Caroline includes Cezanne, Vuillard Bonnard, the later still life series of Manet and sometimes Van Gogh amongst her inspirations, citing the monumental quality of their works belied by the otherwise modest domestic subject matter.