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.”
“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
“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