Caroline Banks, Mixed Media Artist

Caroline Banks is an Anglo-French artist now based at Collage Arts in Wood Green, London. Graduating in Mixed Media Textiles, her career has included art and design including fashion and interiors. In 2001 she moved to India, remaining in Asia till the end of 2007 when she returned to the UK. After a long break from exhibiting, she began showing her work once more in 2014 and is now fully focused on her art career.

She works with galleries and art consultancies as well as exhibiting at art fairs including The Other Art Fair both in the UK and the USA and the Affordable Art Fair in London. Much of her work is commissioned by both private individuals and corporations including the Berkeley Group. Caroline publishes a weekly blog through her website and is a member of the ArtCan advisory committee.

The energy and memory of gesture, the sense of something vitally important yet forever intangible, the transference of energy from one form to another in a cycle of death and rebirth, these are all elements of Banks’ research and exploration. Her work, while abstract, is firmly grounded in observational drawing, the starting point for all subsequent mark-making. Influences are many and various, including archaeology, the Tao, Transcendental Meditation, quantum mechanics, astronomy and performance.

The chosen materials of gesso, ink and sometimes metal gilding, hold elemental and personal associations, adding another layer to her expressive and gestural mark-making. The calligraphic qualities of brush with ink result in paintings which, whilst full of movement, are also contemplative and timeless, meriting slow and repeated viewing.