Pauline Caulfiled Textiles
This March, Dovecot Studios will open an exhibition of work by textile artist Pauline Caulfield, her first in Scotland. The display will feature over 20 large works spanning from 1968 to 2024, ranging from fans and chasubles to fabric panels, and aims to illuminate Caulfield’s versatile yet distinctive work.
Caulfield discovered her love for coloUr in the textile print room while studying painting at Chelsea School of Art. She then pursued textile print at the Royal College of Art, where she would work out her designs and coloUrs with mathematical precision. Caulfield employs a playful painterly approach to light and shade, avoiding dark shadows in favoUr of more saturated colour to achieve a 3D effect.
As part of her RCA Diploma in 1968, she showed a portfolio of 11 large, screen-printed panels in colourful graphic patterns, eight of which have been reprinted and will be on display at Dovecot. At this time, she was also inspired by the ornate chasubles worn by priests, which vary in colour according to the liturgical season. Caulfield specialised in designing ecclesiastical robes, an unusual choice for the time, but a reflection of her Catholic upbringing. She has since won commissions for a number of chasubles, copes and altar frontals printed with strong graphics with sometimes oblique religious imagery. The ecclesiastical works on display including Kintbury Cope (1992), St Paul’s Red Chasuble (1997/2023), Plymouth Red Chasuble (1995) and Black Chasuble (1999) will highlight this fundamental part of her portfolio.
The display will reveal an evolution in the artist's practice from her precise early designs to a more recent freehand approach, using combs and rollers and the dabbing of pigment dyes to achieve spectacular textural and visual effects. This technique can be seen in her works Canvas Back (2017) and Lace Fan (2022). While Caulfield’s freehand practices have given her recent works energetic textural effects, her distinctive approach has remained consistent throughout her career, attracting clients who have sought to display her work as curtains, window treatments and wall hangings. Her most recent work Noren Curtain (2024), inspired by traditional Japanese fabric dividers, will go on display for the first time as part of the exhibition bringing the timeline of her work up to the present day.
“It’s exciting to have my work shown in Scotland for the first time,” says artist Pauline Caulfield, “Having my early work from 1968 to a piece I finished in January 2024 displayed together at Dovecot is wonderful, and I hope visitors to the show will get pleasure from it!
“The display of Caulfield’s work promises to immerse visitors in a world of colour, pattern, texture and illusion,” says Dovecot Director, Celia Joicey “This collaboration reinforces Dovecot’s commitment to promoting visual arts, craft and design and having it displayed on the Tapestry Studio Viewing Balcony highlights the process of textile design and creation.”
Pauline Caulfield Textiles is on show at Dovecot Studios until 20 July 2024.
Find out more and plan your visit:
dovecotstudios.com/exhibitions/pauline-caulfield-textiles