Down to Art | Carol Peace

Work...

Founder of the Bristol Drawing School, Carol Peace is a figurative sculptor who could not work without drawing. The process of drawing, that intuitive response, is what she aims for in her work.

“Walking into Carol Peace’s studio feels like arriving at a party in mid-flow. There seems to be people everywhere – some huddled close together and whispering, others striking a pose at various points around the room. Carol’s creations have a poise all of their own – elegant and caressing, they weave around each other like a room of bronze and resin lovers. “
David Clensy 2008

About Carol Peace

Founder of the Bristol Drawing School, Carol Peace is a figurative sculptor who could not work without drawing. The process of drawing, that intuitive response, is what she aims for in her work.

“It’s all about trying to see, drawing enables that.”

In 1992, she graduated from Winchester School of Art and set up studio in the Bristol Sculpture Shed, which would later become Spike Island, she moved to her Paintworks studio in Bristol in 2004.

In 2019, Carol moved to a new studio in East London, and also has another quiet studio for larger pieces in Wales.

Her intensely personal work is shown and collected all over the UK, Europe, the Far East and United States. Her large-scale work is permanently on show at Glyndebourne and at the Dorchester’s country house hotel in Ascot.

The sculptures are made in clay, which like charcoal is quick to make marks with, once finished it is cast into bronze, those fluid marks of the making are then fixed forever.

“The work is about everyday life, in its minutia, the sheer fantastic-ness of it all.”

“They are first of all, real people. They yearn but they also give. They rise, they don’t fall. They strive; are eternal optimists. They look perhaps slightly disorientated, but there is no pleasure in falling, or in giving up, so they keep on. ‘For us there is only the trying’ ”
Poet, John Terry

Artistic resume and press

Curriculum Vitae

1970 Born Harrogate, Yorkshire

1989-1992 Winchester School of Art, B.A. Hons Fine Art Sculpture

1992-2004 Studio at Spike Island, Bristol

2001-2002 Prince’s Drawing School, London , The Drawing Year

2004-2018 Studio at Paintworks, Bristol

2007-2011 Co-founder and Artistic Director, Bristol Drawing School

2011-2015 Patron, Royal West of England Academy

2013 Barcelona 6 Months SF Residency

2017 Creation of sculpture park at The Dorchester Coworth Park

2018 Studio in Hay-on-Wye

2019 Studio in Bethnal Green, London.

2021 Trustee at Hay Castle Trust

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021 Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
2020 Woolff Gallery, London, link
2018 Woolff Gallery, London, link
2017 25th Year Anniversary Show, Bristol link
2017 Alan Kluckow and Dorchester Hotel, Coworth Park, Ascot link
2016 Woolff Gallery, London, link
2015 Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
2014 Woolff Gallery, London, link
2012 Broomhill Sculpture Park 15th Anniversary Solo Show, link
2011 Fairfax Gallery, Tunbridge Wells
2009 Galerie in Beeld, Netherlands
2009 Beaux Arts, Bath
2008 Paintworks, Bristol, link
2008 Fairfax Gallery, London
2007 Beaux Arts, Bath
2006 Retrospective Show, Paintworks, Bristol, link
2006 Fairfax Gallery, London
2006 Apple Europe HQ, London
2005 Artrepco, Zurich, Switzerland
2005 Northcote Gallery, Kings Road, London
2005 Beaux Arts, Bath
2004 Northcote Gallery, Kings Road, London
2003 Artrepco, Zurich, Switzerland
2003 Gallery 27, Cork Street, London, link
2003 Norton Gallery, Spain
2002 Artrepco, Zurich, Switzerland
2001 Artower Angora, Athens.
2001 Gallery 27, Cork Street, London
1999 Broomhill Art Gallery, Devon
1998 Abbaye De La Roe, France
1996 Burkhardt and Swallow, London
1994 Chilford Barns, Cambridge

Permanent Display

Dorchester Hotel – Coworth Park
Glyndebourne
Lympstone Manor – Installation in 2019

Art Fairs

CONTEXT Art Miami
London Art Fair
Art Palm Beach
Palm Springs Fine Art Fair
AAF Hong Kong
Art Hamptons
Houston Fine Art Fair
AAF Hampstead
AAF Stockholm
ART Toronto
AAF Singapore
AAF Melbourne

Carol Peace