Nurture, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

For this, her second exhibition at Ingleby, Caroline Walker has made a new body of work that turns its focus onto the rhythms, routines and everyday intimacies of family life. The show comprises oil sketches, ink drawings and oil paintings, in which we see the women who Caroline has encountered in this new phase of life – the nursery school teachers who spend their days caring for the children of others, the health worker who visits her baby son, the swimming pool teacher encouraging her daughter to swim, and – always in the background – the artist’s own mother, Janet, providing unflagging support. As always in Walker’s work the intimacy of personal reflection is all the more powerful for its universal resonance. 

Photo: John McKenzie