Heather Carroll is an artist who seeks to relay the thoughts, emotions, tensions that exist within individuals to the environment that surrounds them. In this environment it is nature that predominates.
In her prints she uses a wide range of techniques, notably engraving, monotype and engraving on monotype, some experimental or innovative - such as monotype combined with relief - to achieve rich textures and subtle graduations of colour. These are used not to represent, but either to evoke natural forms, notably trees, leaves, grass and water, or to conjure up, in small formats, the moods of dawn, evening or night. The artist’s velvety textures add a touch of mystery to these moods.

These abstractions from nature relate, because of their formal fluidity and colouring, more to the tradition of the Ecole de Paris than to that of German lyric abstraction. Thus they are delicate and sensitive studies, no bold gestures in sharp hues. Effects of chance, in the form of stain like shapes, make their contribution to the shaping of the colour masses, but the use of these chance effects is carefully supervised by the artist and does not threaten her control of the images. The occasional use of real leaves in her printmaking introduces nature itself as a creative partner in the printmaking process.
These prints are both a sincere response to and a private reflection on some aspects of nature, aspects that have a timeless appeal to human beings.

Heather Carroll’s black and white prints of women inhabit a different world. They are linear. Their composition is derived from drawing, not from washes of colour. Their mood is sharper and is imbued with strong emotions. The subjects or protagonists are depicted in ways that emphasise the emotions they feel – fear, wonder, complacency or bliss. Although the expressive line is of major importance, it is balanced by large, shaped areas of black or white, shadows being used to suggest mystery as well as providing formal and textural contrast to these lines. As opposed to the coloured nature prints these black and white studies of women have a more expressionist, less decorative character.

The colour prints of women are boldly composed in large areas of flat colour, harking back to the French Nabis. Here, the figures of women are primarily part of the overall picture scheme rather than individuals who are prey or give rise to specific emotions. But the coloured studies of men are portraits of individuals. And in them it is the personality of the sitter that catches the viewer’s attention. Nonetheless, even here purely pictorial qualities are important and in l’homme chauve the colour is the composition, the composition is the colour.

Heather Carroll’s sculptures are those of a carver. Stone is her medium. They are mainly human or near-human heads, or animals. Cut out of Luxembourg sandstone, they have a very tactile quality. You want to touch them, you want to feel them. Above and beyond that their forms are both strong and graceful. The subjects and the forms are suggested by the blocks of stone from which the sculptor carves. What is particularly fascinating in these pieces is what is not there – the holes, the spaces. Not just the hollowed out eyes of the heads, but the relatively large area of space that penetrates the head as a form in its own right (T.S. Eliot: “We are the hollow men…”).

The leaping horse – it is clearly an animal in movement – takes us back to the old Chinese traditions of portraying horses, though, at the same time it is a horse possessing the spirit of today. In this piece there is no hole penetrating the animal’s form, but very similar formally are the spaces between the horse’s head and its concave breast and between the fore and the rear legs. It is a work of coiled, tense energy.
This exhibition presents a cross-section of Heather Carroll’s work from the past three years. For such a short period it is remarkably varied in character and technique. She is an artist who not only has a clear idea of what she wants to achieve but also of how to achieve it. Her art gives traditional themes a new look, and most of her images have a strong “presence”. In her pictures and sculptures nothing is facile. Everything is the outcome of a great deal of work. She has the old-fashioned virtue of continuing to improve on and to go further than what she has already achieved. Heather Carroll not only has talent, but, equally important, determination and perserverence. All three qualities are prerequisites of artistic success. I look forward to what she will do next!

Michael Palmer
A leading historian on modern Belgian art, Michael Palmer is the author of From Ensor to Magritte and d’Alechinsky à Panamarenko (Editions Racine, 1994 and 2003)