We recently connected with Caroline Stoughton and have shared our conversation below.

Caroline, appreciate you joining us today. Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

My parents taught me unconditional love. They have always made me feel like I can do anything. They may not always understand why I want to do the things I do but they trust me…I love them so much. They never let a conversation end with out saying I love you. They fully support everything I that I pursue and fully believe in me. They taught me how to work hard, and not let any bad situation keep me down or keep me from making what I want to happen, happen. Because of them, I am strong.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Caroline Stoughton and I am an artist, with a focus on acrylic and oil painting. I sell my paintings out of my studio, currently located in Philadelphia, PA. The paintings that I create are vibrant interpretations of subjects in nature. I paint to recapture the feelings of when I was little and the good feelings from the memories that surround those specific times. All of my paintings take on the colors that I see in nature that I know are often overlooked or believed to be artificial. The colors I use are not. Neon colors exist in nature and they are all around us. I want people to take from my work that, they just have to look around them to find the beauty, excitement, the thrill, the happiness, the joy from whatever moments in their life that they long for again. People just have to look around them to be reminded of that joy. We often don’t look enough because we are so caught up and bogged down by the trials and tribulations of daily life and the day to day life activities that we have to manage in order to simply survive. The reason that I make my paintings is because it brings me back to the good feelings before life got “wild” as I sometimes refer to it as. Through my art I want to bring awareness to things that mean a lot to me like protecting our brains and our memory, protecting, respecting and appreciating wildlife, recognizing the beauty of nature, and most of all recognizing that all we have is a moment.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I paint because I want to bring back my inner child in any way that I can. There is so much pressure on us as humans and we forget to love what is around us. I started painting when I was in high school. At that time, members of my family were dealing with some very intense memory diseases and issues. It is so hard to see a loved one change and not for the better, right before your eyes. When that was going on I was also deciding on my path for the rest of my life. The constant questions I would get like, what are you going to study in college, what do you want to be, what do you want to do, what do you like, and all I could think about just was wishing everything was fine again. I wanted life to be back to the way it was before all the unfortunate circumstances came about. But that just wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible in my reality but it was definitely possible in my art. I wanted nothing more than to paint. When I painted, I got to choose what I was creating. I got to choose the feelings. I kept gravitating towards flowers and scenes from nature. I would interpret them and I remember a teacher of mine asking me why I am using pink paint in the leaf, we were painting from a still life. She told me that it’s green and brown and I need to focus on that. That made zero sense to me! Why would I paint anything other than the colors I was feeling, the colors that made sense to me just came out! It was instinctual. I was so happy to be able to feel these colors during such a bad time in my life that I couldn’t stop making art. I incorporated vibrant colors that just made sense to me into every subject I could that would not “traditionally” use those colors. When I was little, I was never told I couldn’t like imaginary things or bright colors or take time to smell the flowers, look at the deer that are standing staring right back at me, take the ant outside versus kill it right there on the spot. My life was beautiful to me and I relish in those times. As I got just a little bit older I realized I can make whatever I want happen but for a while I felt stuck in the thoughts and negative feelings of negative circumstances. So I would always go back to what I liked when I was super little, like under 7 years old. What did that feel like? Can I have that feeling now? YES! It comes back every time I make art.

Life is so fleeting. Things happen and then it‘s on to the next, but those feelings…the feelings of tossing a ball back and forth in the driveway with my Mom-mom, making lollipop ghosts for halloween with a tissue and a twisty tie, stretching the dough for Friday night pizza, watering the flowers in the garden on the side of the house, watching the cardinals and blue jays land at the bird feeder.. I can still feel those feelings. Even if the memory is not there, I believe the feeling is forever. And that is exactly why I paint. I realize that it is the only thing in life that makes me feel that way again fully, and I can just create it. Hopefully through viewing my paintings, the people around me and those who experience my art get to feel closer to the colors around them and good feelings from their own pasts and present. I hope my art gives them the opportunity to be reminded that we really only have the moment, so do what you want, love what you love and be you…

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think something that non creatives may struggle to interpret about my journey is that there are no answers. When non creatives ask “how the art is going” or “whats new, any shows coming up?”, the answer is, yes and no. I am constantly creating new things and new ideas and my brain is going eighty miles a minute and there are so many new things coming that I a lot of times cant even express them. They might not even be something I can share yet because they don’t exist on the canvas, or the right exhibition opportunity has not come to be yet. It might just be an idea or something in the works that feels so real to me because I am envisioning it! Every single idea, brushstroke, drawing, introduction and email is just a little stepping stone that make you feel like you’re doing the right thing…but it may not seem like anything to outsiders.
SO, with that being said, it takes a lot of trials and a lot of errors to make things happen and a long time! It takes a long time. That is something I’ve actually struggled with because like I have said at other parts during this interview, I know that we do not have all the time. We only have a moment so although it is so nice to be asked what I’m doing next, it is all coming but it all takes time. Often times, things seem to have a way I think something that non creatives may struggle to interpret about my journey is that there are no answers. When non creatives ask “how the art is going” or “what‘s new, any shows coming up?”, the answer is, yes and no. I am constantly creating new things and new ideas and my brain is going eighty miles a minute and there are so many new things coming that I a lot of times can‘t even express them! They might not even be something I can share yet because they don’t exist on the canvas, or the right exhibition opportunity has not come to be yet. It might just be an idea or something in the works that feels so real to me because I am envisioning it! Every single idea, brushstroke, drawing, introduction and email is just a little stepping stone that make you feel like you’re doing the right thing…but it may not seem like anything to outsiders.

SO, with that being said, it takes a lot of trials and a lot of errors to make things happen and a long time! It takes a long time. That is something I’ve actually struggled with because like I have said at other parts during this interview, I know that we do not have all the time. We only have a moment so although it is so nice to be asked what I’m doing next, it is all coming…but it all takes time. Often times, things seem to have a way of coming all at once and it gets difficult to keep track of letting all your loved ones know that something big is happening that I was so looking forward to and so set on bringing to fruition for so long. I try my best to manage it all but I am just one girl and the doubts and wondering if I’m doing it all right, definitely do creep in at times.

There is no set path for a creative. As a professional artist, especially an independent professional artist, I am creating the position, I am fulfilling it, I am creating the duties, I am being seven different roles at once including the artist, including the marketing, including the one protecting the creative mind, including the PR…it is so many parts and while it is all butterflies and flowers most times and I am so lucky to have this passion and pursue it at the level that I do, it is also really difficult and a lot of people have said to me in the past few years a sentence along the lines of this, “your life looks so fun, you literally just walk around and paint pretty things and pet deer” HAHA but that is not true. While that may be what I choose to share, because it is the best part…there are so many other parts that come with this profession that you can not even imagine until you are in it...but I would never choose anything other than this path. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.carolinestoughton.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/carolinestoughton
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100031869234447
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC88zgzZhmuftI-N7DP9lobA

Image Credits
Caroline Stoughton