May in May Painting

Carolyn was born in 1941 in Scotland where her father was a British naval officer and submarine commander. Having shown creative and artistic talent in early years, she was educated at Elmhurst theatrical school near Camberley, Surrey. She then worked in the theatre in London, Paris and Singapore as a dancer and comedienne (with, amongst others, Bob Monkhouse, Dickey Henderson and Benny Hill), before becoming a model in the early 1960s. After that she ran a dress design business in London, manufacturing and selling designer dresses to the pop stars of that time (including Lulu, Sandy Shaw and Susan Maughan). In her mid-thirties she produced intricate botanical drawings, which were exhibited in London by Selfridges and sold as prints by the General Trading Company in Knightsbridge. In the early 1980s Carolyn founded the ‘House of Colour’, Britain’s leading image consultancy, training most of today’s colour & image consultants in Britain and working extensively in the City of London, with celebrities and political figures as well as dressing the windows of Selfridges. In the early 2000s she returned to art, painting seascapes and landscapes in acrylics, watercolours and gouache. For several years, Carolyn had a studio in Cornwall, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, where her work grew into expansive sea and landscapes with a special love for skies. After a long serious illness Carolyn now lives in Wiltshire, England, with her husband and has returned to her real love, which is art. She has developed an innovative method of painting to create artworks with depth, substance and soul. Inspired by nature - Carolyn creates/sculpts the picture first in a plaster made from marble dust and a binder. She then paints the sculpted image using heavy-body acrylics to create vivid and impactful paintings with a highly visible relief and an attractive 3-dimensional feel. Her deep sense of connection to the earth and her love for flowers, plants and the countryside reveal themselves in her more abstract works which are lively and intense in their character. People who have seen the actual paintings have had strong reactions, saying they ‘are mesmerized by them, feel drawn to them and just want to touch them’. Carolyn can be contacted on: