Sanctuaries / An exhibition by Caroline Romer
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Opening Times
Mon 5th - Sat 10th October 2026
Mon - Fri 10.30am - 7.00pm / Sat. 11am - 4pm
I have called this exhibition Sanctuaries because in these paintings I am thinking of the preciousness that is sea meeting rocks in South Devon or the mountainous wilds of North Macedonia where indeed we can also find manmade architectural sanctuaries built in remote and undisturbed places. On the banks of the Loire where I often work, is a sanctuary to me too. The word serves to join the natural and spiritual worlds which helped to inspire the paintings.
Sally Bayley writes: I am thinking particularly of her Devon paintings - arrive as dreams carrying mythic creatures. These are not, however, submerged monsters but alert, territorial beasts braving the elements: spiritually resilient and attentive to something further off; a source of curiosity and possible pilgrimage settles upon the horizon; a version of events ‘over there’. Romer’s shores are devotional spaces; her shorelines places to settle in and watch from: spaces of order and attention, of clear apprehension.
As with South Devon the paintings of the Loire and the Pyrenees in Catalonia are places where Caroline lives for long periods and the objects have a familiarity from observation and drawing as with learning a language there comes a fluency in her method of painting in these places, an inner understanding
The work inspired from North Macedonia we find Caroline using a very different method of work. One where she has looked hard at the early frescoes of North Macedonia abundant on the walls of many chapels and churches hidden in the hills. The Byzantine and early Renaissance idea of telling the life of a saint or a miracle on one canvas or panel has inspired A Day in the Life of Sister Lydia of Zwze for example.
The exhibition will be available online via: www.ceromerpaintings.com