Artist Statement Artist Statement
I have been an artist all my life. From sketching to painting, I have poured in a passion that has aimed to inspire and move others. I learned to sew when I was eight years old, quickly progressing to complicated embroidery and creating dolls, cushions and clothes. I learned to knit and crochet and found a new medium to create wearable art. I made clothes, furnishings, small items like dolls clothes for other people in my spare time, eventually deciding to go to art school so I could, "learn to do it properly". That move in life introduced me to a new social program which involved exploring caves. My art switched to lighting for underground photography and painting from my experiences.
A lonely artist is an artist without direction, so I went on a mission to find others who enjoyed caving trips that involved sketching. Soon a new organisation evolved, producing a worldwide recognition for what I call speleoart; art that involves the subject of speleology, the study of caves.
Caving has been a huge inspiration for me within my profession as an educator for people, of all ages, with brain impairment. From Autism to Alzheimer’s, searching through holes in the mind has helped me find the formations that create the patterns I teach my students to find their way in a mind-maze they have been lost in.
Rock art from all over the world and my work with cave surveys has really interested me. The patterns within them have inspired me to work out new patterns that I use for teaching art to people with various brain impairments. They respond very well with this kind of art. Perhaps it is because of the order and the primitiveness of them. They are a simple language that can transend an abyss left behind in the damaged mind.
I teach the science of art so that anyone, of any ability, can be an artist. When you know your material your mind can do the rest.
Carolina Shrewsbury 2007
