Sheila May Girling was born in
Erdington,
Birmingham on 1 July 1924. Her father, Cyril Stanley Frank Girling, was an engineer working for Dunlop Tyre Company and her mother was Beatrice May (née Harvey). Many of her family members had been painters, including her paternal grandfather, uncle and aunt. Her grandfather was also an art dealer in London, who allegedly would deal in fakes and create forgeries at his studio. Girling studied at the
Birmingham School of Art from 1941-1944 and from 1947 trained at Royal Academy Schools, London. After graduating, Girling moved into a studio in the 'Italian Village' on the Fulham Road in London, designed by artist and architect Mario Manenti. On 17 December 1947, she married Sir
Anthony Caro, whom she had met as a university art student. They had two sons together:
Timothy a zoologist; and Paul, a painter. When she returned to large-scale painting in the 1970s, she began to focus on abstraction. 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. Over this period, Girling developed close relationships with the
Colour Field painters
Kenneth Noland,
Helen Frankenthaler and
Jules Olitski. As Girling wrote, ‘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’. Alongside being an accomplished and experimental painter, Girling also produced a substantial body of works in clay. These abstract collage slabs were made in
Syracuse, New York during a clay workshop with ceramicist Margie Hughto in 1978. Rather than putting pigment on the clay, Girling broke with tradition and put pigment into the clay, which was then layered and pressed together. As her career progressed and her body of work rapidly grew, Girling caught the attention of Acquavella Contemporary Art (
Acquavella Galleries) in New York, who specialised in the works of the
French Impressionists as well as in the works of modern and contemporary artists such as
Lucian Freud,
Henri Matisse and
Joan Miro. Acquavella also represented her husband
Anthony Caro. In 1982 Girling set up
Triangle Artist Workshop with Caro, philanthropist Robert Loder and curator Terry Fenton. Triangle Workshop was 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. In the late 1990s Girling began making smaller collage works on canvas and paper, alongside her established large-scale collage paintings. In the later half of her career, her works moved towards figuration, often sitting at the boundary between abstraction and representation. From the early 1970s until the end of her life, Girling worked from her studio in Camden Town. Girling died of heart disease, at her home in Frognal, on 14 February 2015, aged 90. ==Exhibitions==