Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, it’s high time we talk about Caroline Walker, this artist who does much more than simply paint women at work. She opens our eyes to an entire invisible section of our society, with surgical precision that would make Michel Foucault pale.
You think you know contemporary painting? Let me tell you the story of this Scottish woman born in 1982, who transforms the voyeuristic act into a sociological manifesto. Walker, armed with her brushes and her piercing gaze, infiltrates the interstices of our daily lives to capture these moments we prefer to ignore: a chambermaid changing sheets in a luxury hotel for a few euros per hour, a manicurist who tirelessly polishes the nails of those who can afford this luxury, a mother who methodically tidies her kitchen at 11 PM.
But be careful, don’t be mistaken. If Walker makes us think of Foucault’s “Panopticon” concept, it’s not by chance. Her monumental canvases place us in the uncomfortable position of the supervisor, observing these women through windows, half-open doors, stairways. We become complicit in this constant social surveillance, this invisible control that governs our modern lives. The difference? Walker turns the concept on itself. It’s no longer the institution that supervises, it’s the artist who exposes society’s institutional surveillance of women’s work.
Let’s take a moment to dissect her technique. Her oil paintings are not simple transcribed photographs. No, Walker plays with light like Claude Monet with his water lilies, but instead of bucolic gardens, she offers us scenes of striking realism bathed in artificial lights from neons, desk lamps, smartphones. There’s something deeply political in the way Walker treats light. This light isn’t there to embellish, it’s there to reveal. In her interior scenes, Walker often uses a warm, almost comforting palette, but one that never completely manages to dispel the shadows. These shadow areas aren’t there by chance: they represent everything we refuse to see, everything we prefer to keep in darkness.
Sociologist Dorothy Smith would speak here of “standpoint theory”, this theory of perspective that affirms our social position influences our perception of the world. Walker illustrates this masterfully. As a woman painting women, she deconstructs the traditional “male gaze” to offer us a radically different perspective. It’s no longer the male gaze that objectifies, it’s the female gaze that documents, that understands, that shares.
In her series on refugees in London, Walker pushes the exercise even further. She doesn’t just show these women in their daily lives, she exposes the quiet violence of their situation through subtle details: an unpacked travel bag, bare walls, transitional spaces. It’s Simone de Beauvoir who resonates here, with her concept of “situation” – how social and material environment conditions our existence. These women aren’t simply “in” these spaces, they are defined by them, constrained by them.
Her paintings of nail salons are particularly revealing. In “Pampered Pedis” (2016), Walker captures the absurdity of our consumer society. On one side, women who pay to have their feet cared for, on the other, women who spend their days on their knees for minimum wage. The composition is brilliant: the clients are always slightly blurry, almost erased, while the workers are rendered with almost painful precision. It’s a scathing commentary on the division of social classes, but also on how we choose what we want to see and what we prefer to ignore.
The “Janet” series, dedicated to her mother, is perhaps her most intimate and yet most universal work. By documenting her mother’s daily tasks in their family home in Dunfermline, Walker elevates domestic work to the rank of art. Each brush stroke is an acknowledgment of these gestures repeated millions of times: folding laundry, watering plants, preparing dinner. It’s a tribute to all these hours of invisible, unpaid work that keeps our society afloat.
Make no mistake: if her paintings are beautiful, they’re not there to comfort us. Walker forces us to look at what we prefer to ignore. She places us in the uncomfortable position of the voyeur, but a voyeur conscious of their position, forced to reflect on their own complicity in these systems of exploitation. The size of her canvases isn’t incidental either. By creating works often larger than life, Walker forces us to face these realities in a physical way. We can’t simply look away: these women, their lives, their work literally occupy space. It’s a physical manifestation of what philosopher Nancy Fraser calls “recognition justice” – the idea that social justice also comes through visibility and recognition.
Walker’s latest works, particularly those created during the pandemic, take on an even more poignant dimension. In her representations of nurses and caregivers, we find this same attention to detail, but with a new urgency. The masks, gowns, care gestures tirelessly repeated become symbols of a daily resilience that we have taken for granted for too long. The artist doesn’t just document: she transforms. Each painting is a window, but also a mirror. We look at these women, but we are also forced to look at ourselves, to question our own position in this complex social dynamic. This is where the true strength of her work lies: in its ability to transform a voyeuristic act into an exercise in social consciousness.
Walker achieves this rare tour de force: creating art that is both politically engaged and aesthetically sophisticated. Her paintings are sociological documents, feminist manifestos, but also and above all works of art that touch us through their formal beauty and technical mastery. Through her canvases, Walker reminds us that art isn’t just there to decorate our walls or fill our museums. It’s there to force us to see, to think, to question our assumptions. In a world where we are bombarded with images, she teaches us to really look, to see beyond appearances, to understand the complexity of lives unfolding around us. Her work is a constant reminder that behind every lit window, every half-open door, there are lives unfolding, stories that deserve to be told, realities that deserve to be seen. And maybe that’s it, finally, the true role of the artist: teaching us to see what we look at without seeing every day.
In her “Birth Reflections” series, exhibited at the Fitzrovia Chapel in 2022, Walker explores new territory: that of maternity. After giving birth to her daughter, she undertook a residency in the maternity ward of University College Hospital London. The result is a series of works that capture the intimate and often difficult moments of childbirth and the first days of life. These paintings are particularly revealing of her ability to transform clinical spaces into deeply human scenes. The hospital’s antiseptic corridors become theaters of raw emotions, where life and vulnerability coexist. Walker captures these moments with a tenderness that is never sentimental, an honesty that is never brutal.
The “Lisa” series, which follows her sister-in-law during her pregnancy and the first months of motherhood, pushes this exploration even further. These paintings show us the rarely represented aspects of motherhood: physical exhaustion, endless nights, bodies that transform, domestic spaces invaded by childcare accessories. It’s an unvarnished look at this period of intense transition, where identity rebuilds itself around a new role.
What strikes in these recent works is how Walker continues to explore her favorite themes – women’s invisible work, gendered spaces, social surveillance – while applying them to more personal experiences. She shows us that even the most intimate moments of our lives are shaped by broader social structures.
Walker’s palette has also broadened over the years. While her early works often favored cold and clinical tones, her recent work embraces a more varied range of chromatic emotions. The soft pinks of hospital rooms exist alongside the deep blues of nocturnal scenes, creating a visual symphony that reflects the emotional complexity of her subjects.
Her technique itself has refined, becoming more assured while remaining faithful to her distinctive style. The brush strokes are both precise and expressive, creating a fascinating tension between documentary and artistic interpretation. This technical mastery allows her to skillfully navigate between the realism necessary to anchor her scenes in daily life and the expressionism that gives them their emotional power.
Walker’s growing success in the art market – with works reaching record prices at auction – raises interesting questions about how contemporary art can address social issues while navigating the commercial world of galleries and collectors. Her work proves that it’s possible to maintain artistic integrity and social engagement while finding one’s place in the art market.
But what remains constant in her work is this unique ability to make us see the invisible. Whether it’s a cleaning lady in a luxury hotel, an exhausted mother giving a bottle at 3 AM, or a refugee in her temporary accommodation, Walker forces us to look at these lives that unfold in the margins of our vision.
Her art reminds us that true revolution doesn’t always lie in grand gestures or dramatic statements, but in the ability to see the everyday differently, to recognize the dignity and importance of these seemingly banal moments that constitute the fabric of our lives.
Caroline Walker’s work is much more than simply documenting women’s work or social criticism. It’s an invitation to reconsider our way of seeing, valuing, and understanding the world around us. In a world that often privileges the spectacular and extraordinary, the artist reminds us that true beauty, true meaning, is often found in these everyday moments that we too often take for granted.
Her work resonates particularly today, as we finally begin to recognize the importance of the invisible work that keeps our society running. She shows us that art can be both a mirror that reflects our social reality and a tool to transform it. By forcing us to see what we often prefer to ignore, she invites us to become more attentive and conscious observers of our world, and perhaps, through this awareness, to contribute to changing it.
