A walk in the park - love letters on linen
Caroline Havers’ paintings have always revolved around capturing nature and celebrating it. She is inspired and touched by nature’s beauty as well as its vulnerability, structure, ferociousness and the pure pleasure it emanates; nature as a metaphor of life. Caroline translates these feelings and impressions into love letters on linen.
Looking back at her work over the last years you see her gradually zooming out. From painting the very details of plants, flowers and animals via the exploration of ponds to more broader landscapes. This shift of perspective into landscapes is still being fed by an interest and knowledge of plants, trees, flora and fauna. To think and ponder about the way landscape affects people and their behavior is also intriguing. Park landscapes form a bridge between nature and culture, between towns and countryside, between urban and rural areas. They preserve a sense of the natural world, while undergoing influences of the city.
Her latest series of paintings, A Walk In The Park (2011), has been inspired by daily walks in London’s Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. In the AWITP series the bodies of water do still play an important role. Both the Serpentine in Hyde Park morphing into the Long Water in Kensington Gardens and the Round Pond define the layout of the two parks. Both ponds direct the course of most of the walks in the park too. Without a look at the changing scenery caused by the movements in the water a walk is not complete and thus not satisfying at all.
The subjects of the fourteen paintings in this series travel back and forth between the numerous uses the parks have to offer. There is the possibility to truly enjoy the phenomenon of nature, experiencing the different seasons as well as participating in cultural and sporting events and much more. Hence titles such as “Close To Vernal Equinox”, “Carousel In The Park” and “Triathlon Serpentine”.
Not only does this series introduce the landscape as a new perspective in her work, it also shows the evolution in Caroline’s language as a painter. Whilst holding on to her luscious and vibrant use of color, the liberties in paint application and development of her abstract lexicon allow her more freedom to express herself.
Boundaries disappear.
London, September 2011