Caroline Walker

Caroline Walker’s large canvases and intimate panels depict anonymous women in settings that blur the boundaries between public and private. Walker’s paintings are a lens for the everyday lives of women, and her portraits of diverse subjects tell their story through the spaces they inhabit. Each of Walker’s series conveys a distinct sense of time and place: from the undisguised luxury and class dynamics of beauty parlors in her series Painted Ladies, to the humanistic portraits of refugees and asylum seekers in Home (commissioned by Kettle’s Yard, UK), to scenes of anonymous women at work framed by the architecture of London in service.

In her recent artworks, Walker turns her focus to her immediate surroundings. She explores the boundary between being an observer – that is preserving the “objective” eye of an outsider – and magnifying the experience of a place which has become part of the fabric of her life. They are conceived as a reflection on community and how the anonymous people we encounter become characters in our own stories. Her subjects include a neighbor working in her garden, the local dry cleaner and a pharmacy sales assistant, all of whom are connected within a discrete area of the sprawling London metropolis. Walker describes small movements of daily existence and encapsulates the corners of life which are often overlooked but nonetheless vital, written and erased from history over and over again. They also serve as a kind of self-portrait by recording the artist’s journey through the places she frequents.

Walker has received wide acclaim for her portrayals of women as works of social commentary, although it is her ability to distill viewpoints from familiar settings and her talent as a colorist that first impact viewers of her paintings. The complexities of her subjects’ lives filter through to the surface and coalesce in images that both fulfill the senses and speak to poignant moments of human experience. As a cohesive body of work, Walker’s paintings explore the performance of gender identity, femininity, and question the norms of depicting women and the female form across a range of socio-economic contexts.

Caroline Walker was born in 1982 in Dunfermline, Scotland (UK) where she now lives and works again. Walker received a BA in Painting from Glasgow School of Art in 2004 and an MA in Painting from The Royal College of Art in 2009.

Recent solo exhibitions include: Caroline Walker: Mothering, The Hepworth Wakefield (UK); The Holiday Park, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Nurture, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (UK); Women Observed, K11, Shanghai (CN); Lisa, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (UK); A Female Gaze, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham (UK); Caroline Walker: Birth Reflections, The Fitzrovia Chapel, London (UK); Windows, KM21, Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Women's Work, Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham (UK); Nearby, GRIMM, New York, NY (US).

Selected group exhibitions include: Good Mom/Bad Mom – Unraveling the Mother Myth, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL); Labour of Love: Economies of care in contemporary art, The Glucksman, University College Cork, Ireland (IE); Mama: From Mary to Merkel, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (DE); Beyond these Walls, AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Works on Paper – Women Artists, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen (UK); A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US); Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood, Hayward Gallery Touring, Bristol; Birmingham; Sheffield; Dundee (UK); Licked by the Waves | New Bathers in Art, Museum MORE, Gorssel (NL); My World, curated by Hans den Hartog Jager, Singer Laren Museum, Laren (NL); The Painted Room, curated by Caroline Walker, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL); PUBLIC PRIVATE, Pond Society, Shanghai (CN) and Finding Family, Foundling Museum, London (UK).

Walker is represented in a number of major public collections including: Aberdeen Art Gallery (UK); Aïshti Foundation (LB); Art Gallery of New South Wales (AU); Arts Council of England (UK); The British Museum (UK); Dallas Museum of Art (US); He Art Museum (CN); The Hepworth Wakefield (UK); High Museum of Art (US); Huamao Beijing Foundation (CN); The Hunterian (UK); Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (US); Kistefos Museum (NO); Kunstmuseum The Hague (NL); Museum of Fine Arts Houston (US); Museum Voorlinden (NL); National Galleries of Scotland (UK); National Museum of Wales (UK); The National Museum of Women in the Arts (US); The Parliamentary Art Collection (UK); Pallant House Gallery (UK); Pérez Art Museum (US); The Rachofsky Collection (US); Sifang Art Museum (CN); Tate (UK); The UK Government Art Collection (UK); The University of Cambridge (UK); University of Warwick (UK); and Yale University Art Gallery (US).