Artist Carolyn Blake’s exciting exhibition, ‘Further Than Memory Can Reach’, opens on 24 February in our top-floor gallery space.
Carolyn has created a new collection of paintings, which take us on a journey around the grounds of Winterbourne House, from its creation to the present day.
Along the way, we encounter the people who lived, worked, and played here, and those who visit and care for the garden today.
Winterbourne’s curator Henrietta met with Carolyn to find out more.
H: Carolyn, can you explain how the idea for this exhibition first came into your mind?
C: The idea for an exhibition evolved over months and many visits to Winterbourne. I was fascinated with the garden, which has been used for work and recreation from its inception, and wanted to celebrate its existence by creating a dialogue in paint. I also wanted to incorporate a link with the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, just down the road.
H: Can you introduce us to some of the archival sources you worked with to create this exhibition? What did you find exciting about that process? Did you face any challenges?
C: The archival photographs of the house and garden’s family and servants were an interesting starting point; however, the more I walked around the garden, the more I realised I needed to relate to the present and bring the environment to life. In some instances, the paintings integrate the past with the present.
H: You have taken your own photographic references. How do you choose the best images to work with?
C: I use my iPhone, the constant companion and recorder of daily events. Structure, substance and composition are the important elements. Images are often recorded numerous times throughout the year and the different seasons bring with them new ways of looking.
When I bring the images back to the studio, they are revisited and cropped. I also strip away the unessential elements. Then, the creative process begins! I choose which images to work with based on whether they feel exciting and how they speak to me.
H: Staff and volunteers at Winterbourne feature in some of these paintings. Why was it important to you to capture those who care for Winterbourne today, as well as figures from its past?
C: Gardens are for and about people. The more time you spend at Winterbourne, the more you realise the huge undertaking of constant maintenance that goes on while developing for the future. Having looked at and worked with the archive images, I wanted to show the staff and volunteers of today working rather than posing. I felt a need to record the great work they do.
H: You have referenced works by other well-known artists in some of your paintings. Can you tell us why these works of art appeal to you, and how you have woven them into your paintings?
C: My practice has always been informed by the history of art and contemporary painters. Marguerite Gerard’s painting ‘The Reader’ (1817) at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts struck me as a curiosity, particularly hung next to Etienne Aubrey’s painting ‘Paternal Love’ of 1775, which is a great bit of curating.
In one of my paintings, you see a mother on her iPhone with headphones, oblivious to her son wanting attention. There are also references to the Barber Institute’s ‘Jockeys Before the Race’ by Degas (1879). It’s the juxtaposition of the post in his painting, creating a division in the composition, that fascinates me. Van Gogh’s ‘A Peasant Woman Digging’ (1885) is a gift when painting people at work in the garden.
I also briefly nod to Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘Wanderer above the Sea of Fog’ and Grant Wood’s ‘American Gothic’.
H: You have worked with a composer to create a soundtrack for the exhibition. Can you describe the collaborative process? Do you feel that the evolving soundtrack has influenced the paintings?
C: I’ve been working with Kinna Whitehead, a recent graduate of Composition at the Birmingham Conservatoire. We are familiar with each other’s work. She spent some time in the garden at Winterbourne, collecting sounds from nature, garden equipment and processes, and visitors. I would regularly update her with finished paintings, which enabled her to create the sequence of sounds you can hear as part of the exhibition.
H: What media do you use in your painting? Have your techniques evolved?
C: I work with oil paint and have done ever since O-levels at school. Oil paint is both tactile and fluid. To me, it is a living medium. For some years now, I have introduced a coloured ground to my surfaces (canvas or panel), usually a peach/apricot colour. This is done partially to tone down the heightened white primed surface. More importantly, it acts as a reminder that most of my work is about the memory of an event, not the now.
H: You’ve spent a lot of time contemplating works of art in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts’ collection. Which is your favourite picture in that collection, and why?
C: That is such a hard and almost impossible question to answer. But it would have to be Odilon Redon’s ‘The Crucifixion’ of 1904. It’s very modern in style, with a limited palette and minimal brush strokes, yet it has all the elements of a traditional crucifixion composition. The colour creates the atmosphere, and the brush strokes gently sweep you across the scene of the tragedy – Christ has died, it is over. Congratulations to the curators who hung this painting with the early Renaissance works – it’s brilliant.
H: If you could choose one artist who has inspired you the most, who would it be?
C: John Robinson. I met John in 2008 when he was already an established painter. He uses the medium of self-portrait, often engaging with historical works of art. To quote from the biographical notes on his website: ‘He uses his ‘self-portrait’ images….to make himself slip out of time, to confront the things he loves and hates and to pour time into the surfaces of the paintings. To transcend himself whilst constantly being held up against the past.’
H: Lastly, what’s your next project?
C: It’s already started. An exploration of water, surface tension and reflections.
‘Further Than Memory Can Reach’ runs from 24 February to 14 September 2025. Entry is free with standard admission to the house and garden.
Composer Kinna Whitehead created a soundtrack for the exhibition, inspired by the sights and sounds of Winterbourne garden. Listen to it from the comfort of your own home.
Listen to the soundtrack link to soundtrack via YouTube
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