insideKENT Magazine Issue 66 - September 2017 | Page 32

ARTS+ENTERTAINMENT
KENT ARTIST PROFILE:
CAROLE ROBSON
ARTIST CAROLE ROBSON LIKES TO COMBINE MEDIA
AND IDEAS TO CREATE BEAUTIFUL, FLOWING, MOVING
WORKS OF ART. IT’S A SKILL THAT SHE HAS MASTERED
DURING HER YEARS AS A FULL-TIME ARTIST, AND ONE
THAT SHE ENJOYS TEACHING OTHERS THANKS TO HER
WORKSHOPS AND CLASSES. THIS MONTH, insideKENT’S
LISAMARIE LAMB SPOKE TO CAROLE ABOUT HER WORK
AND HER PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.
If you had to define your art, how would
you describe what you do?
My paintings focus on the natural landscape,
wild flower meadows, verges and woodland
edges. They reflect my lifelong love of nature
and long held ecological views.
My painting style is quite active and
impressionistic. I paint at an easel using
flowing washes of colour and use a variety of
tools to incorporate drawing, marks and
elements of abstraction.
How did you become an artist?
I think I’ve always been an artist. It’s what I did
for fun as a child and my ambition was always
to go to art school. I went on to work for ten
32
years as a freelance book illustrator in London,
before spending a year living in Sweden
because of my husband’s job. I was completely
inspired by Swedish nature and made the
decision to give up my career as an illustrator
in order to concentrate on my own paintings.
You’re an experimental artist; what does that
mean in terms of media and how do you
combine it all?
At the heart of experimentation is play, to
discover what art materials can do and how
they can be combined. Acrylic inks, for
example, mix well with watercolour. You can
add them as you mix paint or use a brush or
dropper directly into a wash. Some inks will
cause a resist effect with watercolour, and if
washed off at the right moment can create
interesting random textures. You can see this
effect in the distant hills of ‘Magenta Sunset’.
I also experiment with a variety of tools and
the marks they can make; a ruling pen, for
example, sticks, a palette knife, water sprayers,
pieces of credit card and fingers, of course.
Other mixed media work may start with torn
collage of printed and ripped paper, paint will
be added, then perhaps texture paste, which
plant material can be impressed into and the
whole may finally be embellished with metallic
powders.
How does digital art feature in your work?
My digital art begins with my paintings which
are scanned professionally and I then import