Born in the UK, studied at Chelsea School of Art & Design, MA/FA Painting (1988) Is a British contemporary painter, who lives and works in London.
Caroline List’s inquiry into colour and illusory space set’s up a colour conversation within her paintings, informed by a number of colour references, such as signatures observed within nature, colour phenomena, colour theory and formal abstraction. This eclectic mix of references generates a spatial language, a visual tension between illusory fields of colour, light, opaque and transparent colour shapes. Her paintings play with the push and pull of picture plane, form and ground, creating compositions with surreal spatial visual horizons.
Caroline’s current paintings and light box works, function as a series, generating an ongoing creative dialogue into light, colour, form and space.The series, ‘Chroma Shape’, ‘Chroma Sphere’, ‘Light Shift’ & ‘Light Chroma’, reference both Modernist abstraction and representational languages. Illusory space is explored through blended (oil gradient) colour shifts, form and light. The physicality and materiality of colour within her paintings set up a spatial language, a visual tension between flatness, (opaque colour), illusory space, (transparent and gradient colour) and horizontality, suggesting, visual spatial horizons. Her Love of paint and colour is explored through the push & pull of the picture plane, using carefully blended light fields of colour, seen in contrast to sprayed veils and painted hard edged organic shapes.
« I often use the format of the Renaissance tondo and the repetition of the circular form, a form which has no beginning or end, therefore the viewer can never fully complete the image. The compositions and colour gradients are generated from collages and paintings on paper, which are later developed into large linen canvases or paintings on board or aluminium. The surface absorbency of colour and light in my work is very important. I want the viewer to enjoy the visual experience of transient colour, which not only references modernist abstraction, but plays with organic totemic forms, illusory space and painted visual horizons.”
Caroline List, 2020
The repetition of the circular form is developed further in the Tondo format and circular led light box works. In the series ‘Chroma Sphere’ & Light Chroma (2019), through the push and pull of the picture plane, sprayed veils of paint are juxtaposed next to clean painted edges and formal shapes, creating layered compositions of floating opaque and transparent circular forms, these works play with the illusion of the picture plain and the tricks of painting, with reference to the Renaissance tondo, trompe l’oeil, photographic illusory space and Modernist framing and compositional conventions. Light Phenomena and the virtual space of viewing is developed further in their back- lit counterparts. These ‘led light box tondos ‘, are digital reproductions of original paintings, encased in bespoke hand crafted light boxes. these illuminated portals also reference the virtual screen of painting and reproduction, which is especially relevant in a time when art works are increasingly viewed through the lens and virtual screen, on platforms such as Instagram and Artsy.
Bio express 2020
Since graduating with an MA in Painting, (1988) from Chelsea School of Art & Design, Caroline has exhibited in London, New York, Toronto, Paris and China and also curated several successful exhibitions in the contemporary London art scene.
Caroline’s work has been collected by a number of private collectors as well as corporate collections including, The Contemporary Arts Society, Neuberger & Berman New York, Fidelity Financial, London, Lehman Brothers, and JP Morgan Cazenove.
Caroline’s work is also exhibited in the Groucho club and is currently part of their contemporary collection in Soho, London. She currently lives & works in London and teaches Mixed Media Painting at Central Saint Martins School of Art & Design, University of the Arts, London. In 2018 she was awarded the re-fresh bursary from Central Saint Martins School of Art & Design which helped fund her last Solo show (2018) Light Chroma ‘.
See website for CV, further works, limited edition prints & led light boxes
See website for further works and cv
www.carolinelist.com
