Caroline Ireland / Painting / Drawing / Web sites

St Michael's Studios, 1st Floor, St Michael's Trading Estate, Bridport. DT6 3RR
Tel - 07792 071721

"If music be the food of love, play on." Shakespeare Twelth Night

Caroline Ireland has lived and worked in Bridport for the past 14 years. She began Bridport Open Studios in 1999 in response to the growing number of artists and craftspeople living and working in the area and the relatively few outlets in which to show their work. This has become an annual event and an important part of Bridport’s cultural calendar. In 2002 she moved into the Edwards Building on St Michael’s Trading estate in Bridport which has subsequently become St Michael’s Studios, now an important focal point for the arts in Bridport.

She originally obtained a degree from Liverpool University in 1977 in History and Archaeology and worked for about 10 years as an archaeologist in the West Country and East Anglia, but her desire to paint came to take over from any other interest and by the time she moved to Dorset in 1992 she was determined to make painting her career and see where it led her.

Her work is often brightly coloured and strongly designed and always determined by a fascination with colour, pattern, shape and line. Subject matter varies and her work follows whatever has captured her interest usually in a series of pieces until whatever visual ideas have been resolved to a temporary satisfaction. Inspiration comes from the Dorset landscape and especially the ancient remains of our ancestors in the landscape, personal discoveries and life events and often, merely the shapes and relationships between objects and their environment. Preferred mediums are charcoal, watercolour and pastel, but she also uses acrylics and oil on canvas to explore particular ideas.