Ten years ago, when the Scottish painter Caroline Walker was in her early30s, she noticed something happening to her artist friends who were having babies. “They were suddenly taken less seriously,” she says. At the time, she didn’t have children of her own, and she was sure that if she ever did, her life as a parent would remain separate from her art. “It still felt hard enough to be taken seriously as a woman artist,” she says, “without adding in this other thing, let alone making it the subject of your work.” She smiles wryly and raises her eyebrows.
We’re speaking ahead of her largest museum show to date – an exhibition at the Hepworth Wakefield titled Mothering. Now 43, Walker has built a dazzlingly successful career as a figurative painter, and is the mother of two small children. Ever since she was a student, first at Glasgow School of Art, then at the Royal College of Art in London, from where she graduated in 2009, she’s been closely observing women. Rendered on intimate panels and breathtakingly big cinematic canvases, her subjects have ranged from bakers and beauticians to tailors and housekeepers – and, lately, the constellation of mostly female workers providing support during childbirth and early-years care.
