Home curtails art career

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32567, 29 March 1971, Page 6

Home curtails art career

Full-time devotion to art is “extremely difficult” for an artist who has commitments to a home and family, said Mrs Sheila Caro in Christchurch on Friday.

“I felt it was better to give up painting for a while and attend to my family, because doing both at the same time meant I was doing both badly,” she said. Mrs Caro was visiting Christchurch with her husband, the British sculptor, Anthony Caro, who was lecturing at the School of Fine Arts, Ham. Although she paints mainly abstracts, Mrs Caro has been drawn to do the odd landscape, “usually when I’m on holiday. I see a patch of grass that inspires and I’m away.”

She was trained at the Royal Academy of Art in London, and it was there that she met her husband.

She worked initially under her maiden name of Girling, but changed to Caro a few years ago. “I’d been used to it for so long it seemed silly not to.” She said she had never felt any inclination towards sculpture herself, but often her husband would ask her advice when he was working at home. “I colour a lot of his work, too, when he asks advice on that, and of course we discuss his work fairly often.” Because of lack of time to produce pictures worthy of

exhibition, Mrs Caro has not exhibited for some time.

“I feel the main point of an exhibition is to shpw pictures that one is satisfied with. I have a large volume of pictures, but there are few that I find enough satisfaction with to exhibit.” Mrs Cgro has two sons, aged 19 and 12. The younger boy shows an interest in art. “I find that I’m learning all over again with him because he is so interested in art. Especially going to see the old masters. I’m really

seeing them again with fresh eyes and appreciating their much more,” she said. The old masters had e “terrific” influence on hei painting, she said. Contemporary artists have not had the same influence but there are a few modern American painters whom she admires. Her husband travelled a lot and usually visited the United States about twice a year, she said. “I usually try to get away with him aboui every other year.”

I Mrs Caro was impressed with the interest in art in i New Zealand.* i “I was especially interested in the amount of time people have to work here. In London one gets so little time and seems to have so many commitments.” As well as her absorbing interest in art —“I try to keep up with every exhibition in London”—she is a keen theatre goer and for a time did scenic design with the Amersham Repertory company in London. Mr and Mrs Caro left Christchurch early yesterday for Perth, Australia, where Mr Caro has been asked to' judge a drawing contest