Caroline - Alchemy Quartets
In this series, the abstract compositions have large open spaces in the middle of the picture plane. Aware of the need for quiet and rest, these pieces offer visual resting spaces. Caroline is thinking in particular of the people who have worked during the pandemic in healthcare, sanitation and public-facing jobs. Additionally, the open spaces are inspired by her own need for "head space" when working creatively. The empty spaces in the paintings actually have subtle lines and shifts in color. Anyone attempting to work creatively or to innovate, as scientists and researchers are today, need the intellectual space to make subtle connections in their work. The series is titled "Alchemy Quartets" for the combination of chemistry and creative magic that we will call upon to survive our current situation.
Caroline - Neighborhoods
The neighborhood series is distinguished by a greater sense of abstraction as well as the use of symbolic forms. The houses, trees and boats are sometimes simplified into childish representations (lollipop trees, flat house shapes).
Caroline - Shell Paintings
Works created for "Slack Tide" the show at the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath Maine. July 2 - August 7.
Caroline - The Extended Mind
These pictures include text, symbols and loose mark making. Influences on this body of work include John Cage, Squeak Carnwath, Phillip Guston and Austin Kleon. Books that have informed the ideas include "The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain" by Annie Murphy Paul (From which I've stolen the title), "How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain", by Lisa Feldman Barrett; "Ways of Being", by James Bridle, "The Matter with Things", by Iain McGilchrist; as well as books on meditation and natural history.
Emerging Translations - Caroline Rufo
Artist's Statement
The philosopher Walter Benjamin once described a moment in translation when an idea hovers between languages, not yet fixed, still open. I think paintings can work the same way.
The philosopher Walter Benjamin once described a moment in translation when an idea hovers between languages, not yet fixed, still open. I think paintings can work the same way.
These works explore line, color, shape, and space as ways of understanding and representing experiences without words. Influenced by midcentury abstract painters, marks are at times loose, repetitive, they circle back and are layered onto each other. These visual choices represent the way that thoughts, sounds, emotions and physical experiences can interrupt, sooth, enlighten and awaken us. Each piece traces the ways we make sense of our experiences, how we notice, judge, or overlook things depending on where our attention rests. The open spaces are as important as the marks: they leave room for reflection, for holding an experience before naming it.
Emerging Translations - Gorse Mill Gallery
Pieces from the two-person show of John & Caroline's work. November 2nd thru November 30, 2025
Flat Bold and Modern
Piers and neighborhoods dominate this body of work. Bold flat colors inspired by modernist artists and the flattened spaces represented in narrative quilts.
