Caroline Walker: Mothering
Caroline Walker: Mothering accompanies Walker’s solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield (May to October 2025), touring to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.
Scottish artist Caroline Walker (b.1982) is known for her accomplished paintings which offer a lens into the everyday lives of women. Bringing together work made over the past five years, exploring themes of motherhood and early-years care, this important publication reveals the evolution of Walker’s highly original artistic language.
Through her large canvases, intimate panels and ink sketches, Walker portrays diverse female subjects in settings that blur the boundaries between public and private worlds, and reveal the complex social, cultural and economic experiences of women living in contemporary society. Walker's considerable skill in fusing a mastery of her medium with subjects that invite debate has ensured her standing as one of the leading painters working in Britain today. This ground-breaking publication celebrates her story so far.
Reviews:
"Caroline Walker is our pre-eminent chronicler of women's work – in particular of caregiving and domestic labour, paid and unpaid. These insightful essays and conversations bring enlivening perspectives – art historical, feminist and personal – to bear on her painted world of mothering." – Hettie Judah, curator and author of Acts of Creation: on Art and Motherhood and How Not to Exclude Artist Mothers (and other parents)
"Caroline Walker is a figurative painter of astonishing fluency. Basing her increasingly complex compositions on her own photographs of family life and day-to-day experiences of motherhood, she weaves tender and visually arresting narratives rich in humanity and painterly intelligence." – Marco Livingstone, art historian and curator
