Carole Hawthorne is a painter based in Nottingham UK.

Born in Coventry then lived and studied in London for ten years. She moved to Nottingham where she did an MA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University.

Her career as an educator culminated in becoming course leader for Foundation Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University which was later transferred to New College Nottingham, where she continued until becoming a full time painter.

Carole now works in Backlit Studios in central Nottingham.

Having travelled extensively, much of her work has been motivated by the many historic sites she has visited.
She has work in private collections including Art UK and several Universities.
She has exhibited widely, most recently two of her paintings have been selected for the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition 2025 at the Mall Galleries in London in November this year.
Carole was chosen by the St Louis Gallery in Oxford as one of their gallery artists for a year, she was selected as one of the top twenty painters in the Amazing Abstract Painters Competition earlier this year. Last year her work was shown in Athens at the Platform Project show. One of her paintings is on show at the Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield in the ‘Abstract’ exhibition at the moment.

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Carole Hawthorne’s abstract paintings are developed from a keen interest in structures, systems, layers and patterns often found in the urban landscape.
Some of her work reflects geometry, for instance, a series of paintings based on Islamic architecture and Moorish decoration found in southern Spain observed when she visited last year.

There is an element of accident and risk within the work. Her palette changes frequently to allow her to explore the infinite possibilities colour offers.
She is rigorous in her process, she makes colour swatches which are referred to in order to search for values, weight and tension.

Carole makes paintings on canvas and paper, these involve layering and masking to create surface texture.

She has also produced a series of Three Dimensional wall pieces, these are constructed in wood and painted with acrylic paint. They are concerned with how colour behaves when it moves over a three dimensional surface and the way it creates optical illusion and shadows.

These pieces are exploring the idea of the ‘object’ rather than the picture plane and are intended to create visual interest when seen from different viewpoints.
Most recently the paintings are based on the spacial relationships between objects and form a new series of work.

Colour is applied, erased then lost in a covering of glaze, then allowed to emerge again.they are very much about paint quality and surface.

 

A full CV and list of exhibitions can be found below.

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