Powder Hills Painting

Hermione Carline is a multimedia artist and oil painter creating paintings, works on paper and original prints from her studio in London. Drawing, photography and digital montage are important components of her art practice, along with her intricate paper cut stencils. Inspired by architecture and the natural world – both close to home and far away – Hermione describes these experiences as snapshots in her memories. Themes come and go and reappear again, so that she is not defined by subject, but through her artistic approach and her way of observing and interpreting three-dimensional forms of abstract shapes, that link the artwork together. The oil paintings are created over many weeks through the multiple application of translucent and semi opaque colour. She adds layer upon layer of transparent pigments to create dimension through the building up of complex colour relationships. Blocks of white or light colour act as structural tools which obscure part of the painted surface, yet allow glimpses of the colour just beneath to appear, creating passages of paint that seem to recede into the surface of the painting. By imagining impossible spaces and landscapes in unreal colours, light and shadow, tension and balance become important themes across her art practice. She creates work that has a three-dimensional quality that draws the viewer into the world of the picture itself. From childhood, born into a family of artists, Hermione was always inspired to paint. Works by her parents and ancestors – the Carlines and Spencers – lined the walls, along with collections of African masks, antique toys and various curiosities. This inspiring atmosphere both empowered her and enabled her to forge her own artistic path by exploring beyond the traditional boundaries she had inherited. After completing her MA at The Royal College of Art, Hermione worked as a textile designer for over 15 years, co-founding the design studio, The Collection, where clients included Pierre Cardin, Christian Dior and Ralph Lauren. The studio created ‘stories’ of designs in particular themes and styles, producing around six collections per year. As Hermione describes: “This earlier career had an abiding influence on how I used colour and created themes or series in my artwork. I loved abstraction and figuration in equal measure, observing forms as abstract shapes, together with my use of stencils, seem to be recurring elements in all my work.