Biography

Sheila Girling, portrait photo sheet c.1940

Sheila Girling was born in 1924 in Birmingham, England. Whilst she initially wanted to pursue medicine, her family, many of whom were artists, encouraged her to study painting.

Girling began her studies at Birmingham School of Art in 1941 and joined The Royal Academy Schools in 1947.

At The Royal Academy Girling met British sculptor Anthony Caro (1924-2013). The couple married in 1949 and spent the rest of their lives working together. Girling worked closely with Caro to select the colours of his works, choosing and applying the red paint to Early One Morning (1962) and selecting the blue of the perspex disc in Blue Moon (2013), amongst many others.

Clockwise: Anthony Caro, And Olitski, David Mirvish, Sheila Girling, Jules Olitski at dinner c.1965

In 1963 Girling and Caro moved to Vermont, where Girling developed close relationships with the Colour Field painters and reformulated what her practice was and could be. In 1965 the couple returned to England to a vibrant arts scene and raised their two sons.

From left to right: Clement Greenberg, Jenny Greenberg, Sheila Girling, Anthony Caro (with broken leg from skiing accident) and Kenneth Noland in Bennington, 1963

When we first visited the States, we were totally enthralled by the artistically charged atmosphere and the people we met. We felt here was where the pulsing heart was.

...the experience of being a mother and a wife has fed into my work in as far as you ‘grow up’ and mature...You really become adult in the real sense of in-depth feeling and compassion, and this must surely feed into the work. My marriage is a creative partnership and I doubt that either of us could have done what we have done without each other.

From left to right: Sheila Girling, Kenneth Noland and XX in Bennington, 1979

The artist Kenneth Noland, who became a friend, showed me acrylic paints, which I'd never seen used before. I learned how to mix them and saw what you could do with them. All the time I kept in touch.

GoldenTM paint pots stacked up in Sheila Girling’s studio, 2015. Photo credit: John Hammond

Inspired by her time in Vermont and the possibilities of new acrylic paints from GoldenTM and AquatechTM, Girling returned to painting in 1973 and began making large-scale abstract canvases.

Sheila Girling at Margie Hughto’s ceramic studio in Syracuse, 1978

In 1978 Girling travelled to Syracuse, New York to take part in a clay workshop with ceramicist Margie Hughto. Over this period Girling made a new body of work in clay, which broke with tradition and put pigment in rather than on the clay.

Sheila Girling working on a collage at Triangle Art Network in Barcelona, 1987

From 1982-1992, Girling and Caro set-up and ran Triangle Workshop, an artistic network that connected abstract painters and sculptors across continents. Here, Girling developed her collage painting technique that makes-up her late body of work and for which she is most well known.

Throughout her career, Girling had numerous exhibitions at galleries including Acquavella Contemporary Art (New York), Francis Graham- Dixon Gallery (London), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), Warwick Arts Trust (London) and Camden Art Gallery (London).

Sheila Girling’s studio in Camden Town, 2015 John Hammond

From the 1970s until 2015 Girling worked from her studio in Camden Town, London. In 2006 Sheila Girling Retrospective opened at Insitut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM, Valencia) and in 2019 her work was collected by The Yale Centre for British Art (New Haven).