Carol Rhodes was a Scottish painter, teacher and activist known for her paintings of imagined landscapes... 

Carol graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1982. But she didn’t immediately start her career as a painter. Her 20s were dedicated to social and political activism. In the 1990s she returned to art and brought a unique style to contemporary British painting. Her paintings show imagined views of imagined places.

Carol Rhodes, Caravans, View, 1994. Part of the Paintings in Hospitals collection.

The paintings are familiar but distant, often on the edge of where humans and nature mix. The titles give extra clues as to the subject of the paintings, Caravans, View and Sea and Land for example, but still leave space for our own impressions and interpretations. You can make out elements and certain bits of subject matter – a road or a line of trees – but the details are not clear. This purposeful abstraction allows us as viewers to put our own experiences into the pictures. Does that look like the view when the plane was descending? Might that the birds-eye view of the road around the corner?

Carol Rhodes, Sea and Land, 1994. Part of the Paintings in Hospitals collection.

In Sea and Land we look down at a pale landscape. Cool green fields meet the soft grey of a calm sea. We can just make out a small jetty reaching into the water. Not a single person can be seen on the shore. Perhaps it is winter, or early in the day before anyone is awake. The scene is far below us. Where might we be? On a plane perhaps? Or are we imagining a seagull's view? Nothing is completely in focus, but it all does seem clear.

In an interview in 2009, Carol said that painting, ‘is always a sort of manifesto about what art is now, and what it might become… It allows me into the real meaning of the painting, whatever that may be’.

Carol died in 2018 at the age of 59 from Motor Neurone Disease.

Carol Rhodes, Buildings, 1994. Part of the Paintings in Hospitals collection.

Buildings is currently touring as part of the exhibition Slow Painting organised by the Hayward Gallery. There is also a Slow Painting publication available. Upcoming dates:

• The Edge, University of Bath and Bath Spa School of Art and Design
  10 April – 6 June 2020
• Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, and Thurso Art Gallery
  24 July – 3 October 2020

See more from the Paintings in Hospitals art collection...