Sandymount Artist Carole Shubotham, pictured above, has a suggestion for all holiday home owners, if your holiday home is vacant during the working weeks of the year: Would you be willing to let an artist take up residence for a couple of months so that they could draw and paint your holiday location? She says that this could be beneficial for both the holiday home owner and the artist, who could maintain the house and leave behind a work or two to thank the owner.
I talked with Carole in her workshop, the Back Alley Studio off Newbridge Avenue, where she discussed her work and the paintings she enjoys producing, from locations such as the old Head of Kinsale, the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren and the Arran Islands.
Her landscapes are full of the colour of the scenery. They also express the feeling of the artist in touch with her surroundings and contain all the mood and impression of a place of beauty. She said that she likes a large canvas for a picture: “The bigger the better,” she says.
Carole studied fine art at the National College of Art when it was in Kildare Street and is a member of the United Arts Club in Dublin and the Visual Arts Association. Her training has ranged from fine art to fashion. For many years Carole did figure drawing in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology with Mary Burke.
She says she loved the work of Soutine and Igon Schiele. In addition to her landscapes, she says that the only time that she ever stopped doing life drawing was when she was pregnant and unable to draw.
She has two daughters and now her grand-daughter Shauna, 5, comes to her studio where she has great fun doing art, something Carole encourages and fosters. She has a lively young Labrador dog called Lucy who gets drawn when she’s resting.
She likes to get in a swim in the Forty Foot in the morning to start the day, she is very much an outdoors artist but has also covered many life and still work projects in her time.
Art has recently taken Carole to work on a drawing marathon in the New York Studio School of Drawing Painting and Sculpture and last year she travelled to Umbria in Italy where she attended the International Arts School.
She works with oil but uses water colour, depending on the subject, such as a damp day on a coastline. She has a van and often heads out to Greystones or Wicklow with all her tools and canvases.
Carole Shubotham has also completed a number of commissions. Some of these included works for the Dublin Civic Trust, the writer and playwright Peter Sheridan, the RDS, the Irish Embassy in Singapore, the writer Fiona O’Brien and for the newly-built Irishtown Garda Station.
She has exhibited across Ireland from the Cherry Lane Gallery in Delgany, the Cong Art Gallery in Mayo, the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, the Soda Parlour in Doolin in County Clare, the United Arts Club, Dublin and also at the Gallery Monte Castello de Vibio Todi in Italy.
Carole’s next venture is to spend some time with Cill Rialaig Art group in Kerry and she may have an exhibition of her Irish coastline paintings coming up in Vancouver in Canada.
She has worked with painting and drawing groups such as the Donnybrook Art Studio and the Back Lane Painters, which included Irish artists John Dinan, the late Desmond Hickey, Tony McCarthy, Tom Scott, Sean Tiernan and a big influence to Carole, Patricia Sellmer.
So if you have a holiday location that you would like to get an artist to paint, you can find Carole on the internet atwww.caroleshubotham.ie or she can be contacted on 086 241 7054.