Collection: Carolyn Little : Painter : Swansea

"I was born in Swansea in but grew up in Haverfordwest. After studying painting at Swansea College of Art I taught Art in secondary schools in London and Swansea and eventually for the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at Swansea University. I have been exhibiting my work regularly since 1977 and am a member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales.

My work is abstract in that it does not necessarily represent anything in its final stage but the ideas come from various sources. Each painting starts because I have seen some thing or place that I have found visually interesting in some way. Perhaps an old piece of rusting machinery, a decaying tree trunk, full of distinctive shapes and exciting textures, an overgrown garden, some complex rock strata on a beach, the debris in derelict factory or the twisted metal of vehicles in a scrapyard, but these I use merely as basic shapes, not as reference. The pictures themselves evolve as the colours are added and begin to relate with each other. What they eventually become often takes a long time to reach with many revisitings before they are finished, and I have no idea when I start as to how they will end. My chief interest is colour and I am attracted to bright colours, so I am constantly trying to balance one strong one with another, and often use fluorescent paint to intensify that brightness. I usually make square paintings because I like the discipline of having to fit my conception into a uniform space.

Essentially, my work is not based upon any literal vision or intention. It carries no hidden messages but exists in its own visual sphere and must be seen and interpreted as the viewer chooses to see it."