About
Biography
Caroline Fay is an Irish artist based in Upstate New York. She holds a BA degree in Fine Art and attended the Art Students League of New York where she studied figurative drawing, painting and portraiture in the atelier tradition. A keen traveller, she has had the opportunity to learn about new cultures; realizing in part the motivation and inspiration for her work.
Her current studio practice is focused on oil painting and watercolor in both miniature and large scale renditions of the natural world. She was solo award winner of the 2019 Decentralization (DEC) Individual Artist Grant from New York State Council on the Art and embarked on a year-long art and research project that focused on raising awareness about threatened birds and their habitats in Upstate New York.
In 2016, she was chosen to exhibit in the London Irish Art Exhibition, in the impressive Central Hall, Westminster Abbey, which celebrated some of Ireland’s great artists. She has won multiple awards for her work which had been exhibited in Ireland, London, France and New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections in Europe and in the US.
Caroline currently lives in the hamlet of Walton in the Western Catskills, where she opened the doors of the Big Little Art Studio (BLAS) in 2017. An old general store was turned into a personal studio and public art space where she teaches art workshops and holds creative events for the community. She regularly travels back to her home of Co. Cavan, in Ireland where she has been teaching successful painting workshops for the past 10 years.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artistic practice is inspired by the profound and intricate connection between nature and humanity. I am fascinated by cycles of growth and decay and I find peace in embracing the ephemerality of nature. My atmospheric landscapes of bogs and wetlands are meditations on seemingly ordinary yet captivating worlds and serve as a means of self-expression and introspection. A way to reconnect to our essential nature and experience the beauty of the natural world. What interests me most are the creatures and animals that go unnoticed, the raw beauty of overlooked landscapes and the intricacies and unique biodiversities around us.
Exploring this connection goes beyond mere aesthetic appreciation and personal experiences. Through my art, I aim to raise awareness about environmental issues, such as climate change, habitat destruction, and species extinction and challenge viewers to reflect on their own relationships with the Earth. Ultimately, my goal is to inspire a sense of reverence and appreciation for nature through my depictions of landscapes, wildlife and the floral world.
‘Idir’ from the Wetlands Collection, 2022.
Wetlands Collection - Artist Statement
Wetlands are the in-between places that are both land and water, decay and growth, tension and release. They are layered borderlands of marshy terrain where time appears to stand still while a slow transition takes place beneath the surface. Composed of rotting vegetation, dark waters and sphagnum moss, these are, to some, the lesser admired of earth’s wildernesses. To others, they are prized as deeply rich and fertile, home to rare fauna and flora with ecosystems that play a crucial role in the balance of nature.
These imagined landscapes are loosely remembered scenes from the past - from the lakes and ancient peat bogs of Ireland where I was raised, to the endangered wetlands of Upstate New York where I now live. The series builds on my exploration of the bonds between human and land, and the role nature can play in consoling and reviving us.
These works were conceived around the birth of my first child and the period of early motherhood, itself a territory of transition and uncertainty. The act of navigating between the known and unknown is mirrored in the painting of each wetland - reducing a scene to its essentials, merging the abstract with the representational, embracing the imperfect or the ambiguous - until a sense of place unfolds. For me, they are meditations on places that offer solace and space, somewhere to reconnect to our essential nature and experience the mystery of the natural world.