L.C. CARIOU
SHOP AT SAAG FEATURE ARTIST
10 MAY 2025 - 26 JULY 2025
’s watercolour paintings centre on the beauty and resilience of plants, celebrating their uplifting spirit and ever-changing nature. Through compositions she spotlights natural places to wander and sights of wonder, hoping to spark biophilia—the deep, innate connection between humans and the natural world.
Her approach to watercolour is deliberate and patient, encouraging viewers to observe with intent, noticing the textures and nuances of the plants. Every brushstroke she makes is a conscious effort to honour every leaf and every petal in every painting.
Cariou looks to find an intersection between botanical illustration, which isolates a plant’s detailed structure with scientific precision against a blank surface, and landscape painting, creating dynamic scenes and immersive environments that reflect the interconnected complexity of nature.
Through this junction she looks to evoke a sense of the Sublime — a profound greatness that inspires awe and wonder that goes beyond ordinary beauty — and a feeling of vastness, transcendence, and humility in the face of nature's grandeur. This invites viewers to recognize and deepen their own awareness and connection to the natural world.
L.C. Cariou attended Concordia University (Montréal) and the Alberta University of the Arts (Calgary), graduating with distinction in 2019. Her work has exhibited at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours 209th Annual Exhibition and Winners: Award Winning Artists 2020- 2022 (London, UK), and she was the recipient of the 2021 Leatherseller’s Prize for best artist under 30 from The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers. In 2022 Cariou had a solo exhibition, GLIMMER, at Bluerock Gallery. In 2023, she took part in the Artist Inn Residency Inn Program (AIRI) at Calgary’s Downtown/Beltline Marriott Residence Inn Hotel. Her work was the official artwork of the 2023 IGNITE! Festival of Emerging Artists. Additionally, her paintings have been published in the best-selling guidebook “The Scenic Geology of Alberta” and in an alphabet garden book of prose. She lives and works in Calgary.
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