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| FEATURES | BY JANE WRIGHT |
 Above: Sheila Girling with her creation Passage; Below: City Wall  |
Sir Anthony Caro came along to the opening of his wife’s new exhibition The Energy of Colour at the Pilgrim Gallery in Lamb’s Conduit Street, Bloomsbury, last week, but declined to pose for photos, saying firmly it was Sheila’s show. She tells me: “People do sometimes ask: ‘Are you having a show to show you can do it, too?’ But they also come to our studio in Camden Town interested to look at Tony’s work, and buy mine.” So, at this stage in her career, she’s not complaining. “Particularly if you’re female, you’re dead from 60 on,” she says. “But gallery owners flock to see students’ shows. I’d like to hire a young painter with orange hair to present my work and see what happens.” In her own rebellious youth, studying at the Royal Academy schools in the 1950s, where she met her husband, Sheila was not allowed to paint any of her trademark abstractions. “It was all very academic,” she says. “The history of art took a long time to get to the abstract.” Even now, she acknowledges, the public does not feel altogether comfortable with it. “I do a lot of landscapes and seascapes when I take time off at our cottage on the edge of a cliff in Dorset. When people see them at the studio, they say ‘These we understand’, and I understand that. But my husband says that in my abstract work I let figurative images come through.” Many pieces in Sheila’s new show were inspired by sitting outside a restaurant watching people walking in front of the walls outside. By mixing gel with pumice, she produced a wall-like surface texture, and she then she collaged slabs of coloured canvas on top. But she is very clear that for every piece, as the title of the exhibition suggests, “I have to start with colour, or it just doesn’t work”. She recalls some petty burglaries at her studio, the light and spacious Victorian former Dunhill tobacco factory in Georgiana Street, Camden Town. “A policewoman was taking finger-prints when she stopped to exclaim ‘What marvellous colours’. I was pleased about that.” Sheila and Sir Anthony do the ten-minute drive every day from their home of “forever” in Frognal, Hampstead, to work at the studio, she on one side of the courtyard and he on the other. “I like to be in a routine,” she says. “I work well in the morning and Tony works better after lunch. Then he always asks me to come into his studio before we go home to look at what he’s done. We criticise each other’s work a lot.” She continues: “I love working in Camden Town. The urban atmosphere is exciting. And I love the sensuality of paint. I work on the floor with sponges, mops and my hands as well as brushes.” Commenting on the title of one painting in the show, Amber Scent, she adds: “I hope all my senses come into play when I’m working. “I don’t have assistants, so I’m heaving the paintings around by myself and I get very tired at the end of the day, but I like the physicality.” The Caros hectic life began early, after they married and the first of their two sons was born when Sheila was still an art student. “My mother’s father and sister were both artists,” she says. “She told me I could go to art school, as long as I didn’t marry an artist. And Tony didn’t sell early on. He was too avant-garde, so he had to teach. His father was very against him being an artist, but his mother helped us out with the school fees.” They came to live in their Hampstead “stabling block with a lovely garden” when Sir Anthony was working as assistant to the legendary sculptor Henry Moore. For over 20 years, Sheila didn’t exhibit at all. “I was bringing up babies, although I used to help Tony by choosing what colour to paint his sculptures,” she says. “But these days, exhibitions are great. They get me out of the studio. Working totally alone in a vacuum isn’t good.” She is also inspired by getting out to museums and liked the “raw strength” of German painter Max Beckmann’s show at Tate Modern earlier this year. “Everything teaches you something,” she muses, “even bad art.” She is not a great fan of the Turner Prize. Referring to last year’s finalists, she says: “I can’t go along with just a light going on and off. In any case, it kept fusing. Conceptual art comes from a different place and I can’t see how it can possibly be judged. “But Tracey Emin is awfully good. She shows herself honestly, warts and all.” Sheila and Sir Anthony are both also showing work in this year’s recently opened Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and she is clear about her future in the business. “I’d get very frustrated if I didn’t paint, and probably turn to drink,” she says. “I’ll go on until you have to strap a paint brush on to me.” n The Energy of Colour, works by Sheila Girling and Graham Boyd, Pilgrim Gallery, 58 Lamb’s Conduit Street, WC1 until July 3. Free. |
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