Talk to Rochford Life by E-mail  For  contact numbers see details on individual pages. HOME WHO WE ARE CONTACT US
RDC News Make a point of visiting us weekly!        Tell a friend about us. The Rochford Art Trail 2015  Page 22: The Pavilion: Cara Ayers

Return to 2015 Contents Page

           

Talking with Cara Ayers in venue 1


Rochford Life:  Cara, we’ve met before. You were at the Pre-Trail Market last year I believe, and you also have some startling pictures hanging in Venue 4, Ellis’s in South Street.

Cara: That’s right. The ones in Ellis’s are oil paintings


RL:  And your bio in the window in South Street says that you have taught but now have your own studio and are painting full time? Is that right?

Cara: It is. I didn’t want to go back into teaching and so I have set up my studio in Canewdon and am trying to just put as much work together as I can, and get it seen in exhibitions. I have just sold one in Wales in a museum there.


RL:  These paintings here in the Pavilion are very different to those in Ellis’s window. How would you describe these?

Cara: These are all hand painted lino prints, so basically I cut the lino, totally, so I don’t keep printing over and over, I cut it totally for the design, totally cut like a woodcut, I print it and then I paint each section in individually with inks.    


RL:  It must take an incredible amount of time to cut out each of these?

Cara: It does. They take me about thirty hours to cut. The printing is the quick bit and then I have to hand paint in all the colour work. I take the print, a black and white print with all the gaps where I have cut out, and paint in all the colours with inks, so that is why there is such a variation of colour on each one. For the complete picture it’s probably about fifty hours of work, but I do enjoy it. It’s actually something I learnt when teaching children at school because we didn’t have time to do traditional lino cuts with print cut and then print cut, and so this was a way I managed to get them to experience lino without doing it traditionally.


RL:  But you also do oil paintings as well, as we see in Ellis’s. What’s the balance between the two?

Cara: I try and balance them out and do both. This comes more naturally to me in a way, because of the design side, because I studied in graphics and illustration at Southend Art School. I tend to find it easier in a way because it is design and that’s my past. With the oil painting I am almost self-taught because at college oil painting was such a small section of my course. When I became a teacher I had to learn oils and practice and practice it just to teach the children. It’s been a year since I did teaching and I really enjoy the freedom of doing what I’m now doing.

 

RL:  It’s a question I always ask, but how long have you been painting?

Cara: I’ve always done painting. Even when I was doing teaching I did my own work at home but obviously not as much has I do now. Now I am practicing every day and I work in my studio from about nine in the morning until about five-thirty in the afternoon. I’m constantly experimenting and trying different ideas so I make myself paint every day without fail


RL:  Well Cara, thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you and learn about how these amazing works of art come into being. Thank you again.


Below are two of Cara’s paintings from Venue 4


Contact e-mail: carajayers@googglemail.com




As the the Rochford Art Trail gets under way we we dropped in on Venue 1, the Pavilion of the Rochford Hotel  good to pick up on one or two of the artists displaying there. The first was visual painter Cara Ayers

Top of page