Caroline Walker offers an empathetic perspective into the hidden aspects and private moments within the evolving lives of women, reminding us that our reality still exists. Her paintings frequently feature women engaged in everyday activities, creating a narrative that is both intimate and universally relatable. Walker's work shows the evolving roles of women across generations, presenting raw and unfiltered scenes — refreshing considering the staged and airbrushed visions we are growing so accustomed to through social media platforms.
For volume V of our interview series “Conversations on the Canal”, Walker discusses her intention to create an emotional connection, and to conjure personal memories and associations with her viewers, by inviting them to come and peer in.
I want people to connect with the work in some way, whether that’s recognising something in the paintings that resonates with their own experiences, or reminds them of someone in their life or makes them look afresh at what we so easily overlook in our lives and more broadly in society. I think it’s the artist’s job to hold a mirror to the world, but the viewer’s to decide what they see
Lyra: We understand “Making Fishcakes, Late Afternoon” — currently on view in the exhibition “I’m Not Afraid of Ghosts”- is a depiction of your mother. What inspired this particular scene? And do you consider yourself an observer, despite your profound personal connection to your subjects?
Сaroline Walker: ‘Making Fishcakes, Late Afternoon, December’ is part of an ongoing series of paintings of my mum, Janet, that I started in 2019. In the paintings she’s seen engaged in the work of home-making: cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, gardening, and in the most recent paintings I’ve made of her, we see her in the role of granny, looking after my children. The original impulse to turn my focus to someone so close to me came after making a series of paintings of women working in hotel housekeeping in 2018. Spending time shadowing these women who spent their days going through the repeated motions of changing beds, cleaning bathrooms, hoovering and dusting, made me wonder if they went home and had to do the same work in their own houses, but unpaid. It led me to think about domestic labour and who does that largely invisible work. My mum suddenly seemed like such an obvious subject for me, as someone who has been quietly working in the background ‘keeping home’ for 40 years. These paintings have been a way of me celebrating both her unsung work and that of countless other women whose days are filled with this work of maintenance and care.
Of course the relationship to my subject is very different when it’s my mum in the house that I grew up in, but somehow when I look at her through the lens of my work I am able to observe her with a similar objectivity to my other subjects. It becomes about putting a painting together and communicating an idea. I enjoy the oddity though of working on a painting in the studio of her then popping round to my parents house for a cup of tea and sitting at the kitchen table I’ve just been thinking about how to paint half an hour before.
Making Fishcakes,
Late Afternoon
Lyra: Has your perception of women’s roles evolved from your early paintings of “fancy ladies” and depictions of your mother to your current work?
Caroline Walker: When I was a little girl drawing what I referred to as ‘fancy ladies’ I had a very simplistic idea about women’s roles and identities, but much of that was shaped by societal and cultural norms. Even at a young age though, I was questioning these rigid roles and of course this is something that has evolved as I’ve developed as an artist and gone through different stages in my own life, which has influenced my work a lot.
Maternity
Photography:Peter Mallet
Ink on paper, 47.5x33cm. Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York
Lyra: You mentioned in an interview for Matrons and Mistresses that you prefer to use your own photography as part of your artistic process, rather than draw on existing imagery as inspiration. What does photography give you that existing imagery can’t?
Caroline Walker: It’s really important to me that I take the photographs, that I was there in that place with those people and that there was a shared experience which is being recorded through the photography to then be referred to in the studio. The work is really about how I see the world around me and interpret that through painting, so it’s essential that the starting imagery is my own. When I’m in the studio making the paintings the photographs serve as a tool along with the memory of being there. If I were using existing imagery to draw from, I think my work would be about something quite different.
Nurture
Photography: Peter Mallet
Oil on linen, 215x160cm. Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York
Lyra: Western art history has largely cast the male gaze as the portrayer of the female figure. How does your female perspective allow you to challenge traditional representations of women in art?
Caroline Walker: I don’t know if it’s challenging it, but I do believe it’s adding another perspective, one which is coming from an understanding of the lived experience of being a woman, rather than as an outsider looking into a woman’s world. I’m interested in the less visible aspects of women’s lives which may not have previously been seen as an interesting subject for painting and perhaps it’s this female perspective that’s helped me identify these and believe in their value as subject matter. I think my position as a female artist does also afford me access to some subjects which might be less accessible to a male artist, such as a birthing suit in a maternity hospital or the private domestic space of a new mother.
Mini Professors
Photography: Peter Mallet
Oil on linen, 180x135cm. Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York
Lyra: Can you discuss your use of windows and mirrors as devices to challenge viewers to reflect on their own perceptions?
Caroline Walker: I’ve always been attracted to windows and mirrors as pictorial devices, both in the paintings I love to look at and in making my own work, probably because of how they position the viewer asking them to consider who they’re looking at and how. That also translates to a question of the relationship between the artist and subject. ‘Making Fishcakes, Late Afternoon, December’ was one of the first paintings I made of my mum because it has such a strong association with memory for me. I’ve probably seen that scene, or similar, thousands of times, walking into the backyard of my family home and seeing my mum busy in the kitchen in the late afternoon.
The contrast of the twilight outside and the warmth of the interior is something I return to again and again in paintings because it’s so visually striking, but also really sets out the separation of inside and outside, of the viewer in a separate space to the subject. In my larger paintings, I’m always trying to create a space that you feel you could walk into, that the scale of the objects in the foreground feel like something you could reach out and touch. By placing the viewer in the scene like that, I hope they’ll feel implicit in it somehow, less like they’re looking at a picture of somewhere else, and more like it’s a place they somehow already know.
Mini Professors
Photography: Peter Mallet
Oil on linen, 180x135cm. Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York
Lyra: In an article written by Ruth Millington, you mentioned not wanting your work to be prescriptive about what someone should think but, what kind of emotional or intellectual response are you aiming to evoke?
Caroline Walker: I want people to connect with the work in some way, whether that’s recognising something in the paintings that resonates with their own experiences, or reminds them of someone in their life or makes them look afresh at what we so easily overlook in our lives and more broadly in society. I think it’s the artist’s job to hold a mirror to the world, but the viewer’s to decide what they see.
Preparing for Laurie I
Photography: Peter Mallet
Oil on board, 45x36cm. Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York
Lyra: Here do you refer to for inspiration or guidance in your artistic process?
Caroline Walker:Most of the inspiration for my work comes from what I see around me, and I find the everyday a rich source of subject matter. In that respect I’m quite self-sufficient and often have a very clear idea of the direction I want my work to go in. When it comes to the technical aspects of making the paintings, so much of this is a process of trial and error and refining my use of materials as I work out what I do and don't like. I’ve had a lot of guidance on this front over the years from Alan Fitzpatrick, who owns AP Fitzpatrick, a fantastic art materials shop in London. Alan recommended some years ago that I try an acrylic underpainting before working in oils, allowing me to achieve a richness and depth of colour I hadn’t previously managed — it transformed my work.On a day to day basis in the studio, I rely on my architect husband and artist best friend to help me figure out how to fix something when it doesn’t look right but I can’t see for looking at it. Having a second opinion is always helpful.
Caroline Walker in her studio,
London
Photography: Peter Mallet
Courtesy the artist, GRIMM Amsterdam | New York | London, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, and Stephen Friedman Gallery London | New York