Caroline Magerl Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1964 -

Living on the fringe of ordinary suburban life can bring a wry perspective. It was such a view that I experienced in being raised aboard a yacht. The physical distances encouraged detachment but also a corresponding need to belong, and a lifelong curiosity about the inner and outer lives of people .

What resulted is a unique and intimate body of work that peeps inside the unconscious self, tapping into dreams to find a visual language to express the journey in life. A familiar human narrative experienced by all, which encompasses our many individual journeys.

Born in 1964, we arrived in Australia from Germany in 1966 with my mother and father.

I lived at the edge of Sydney’s suburbia until seven when my parents set sail on the 45 foot boat that dad had built in the backyard.

I made a living during my 20s as a cartoonist for a yachting magazine, drawing on a darkly wry sense of humour and years experience sailing up and down the east coast of Australia and to New Zealand.

l continued work as a cartoonist and illustrator but my heart’s wish was to create children’s books.This desire received a boost when I won the Children’s Book Council of Australia, 2001 Crichton Award for best new talent in the field of Children’s Book Illustration.

I started to notate my memorable and sometimes shattering dreams, which were to become a huge influence on my work. In 2001 we moved to Eumundi, a village in the coastal hinterland of Queensland, Australia, and began painting fulltime and exhibiting. This was a busy time with sell-out shows and important connections made with key figures such as the late Sydney art gallery owner Eva Breuer.

In 2006 we were on the move again, this time to Canberra to learn printmaking at the Megalo print studio, studying under Deborah Perrow, master printmaker formally employed at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. I soon had a press of my own.

Now living in Buderim, Queensland, with my husband and teenage daughter.

Children’s books remain a great love and in 2012 and was awarded a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts to write and illustrate a children’s picture book.