Carrie Stanley
Carrie Stanley’s work focuses on family, memory, traumatic loss and re-finding one’s place in the world as a result. The work uses a personal archive of analogy photography, letters and the artist’s own writing as the raw material for her practice. This material then transmuted through a rich variety of media including oil paint, charcoal and pigment into visceral and sensual works where physicality is key. Her expressive and dynamic practice is key to reclaiming and reimagining an identity in the present tense and into the future. The works although raw in nature are transposed by the joy of making and saturated colour.
After Carrie’s husband Mike died through suicide, she experienced a prolonged state of complicated grief. This experience of complicated grief panned out as intense shock and numbness, disbelief and dysfunctional behaviours which left Carrie in a state of post traumatic stress which brought on feelings of constant hyper vigilance that affected her physically and mentally over a long period of time. Suicide is so brutal and final, the suddenness of it causes a ripple effect that can play out in a myriad of ways. These stop the normal course of healing, nothing and nowhere feels safe. The huge stigma that still surrounds this type of loss brings shame; It’s this state of mind state that Carrie has been focusing on banishing throughout her practice and griefwork.
Carrie received Arts Council DYCP grant in 2022 to explore and make work about direct experiences of complicated grief through suicide. This project gave her the chance to address specific traumatic events through drawing and painting them from imagination and memory. She collaborated with poet Alec Finlay, as words suited some retellings better than images. The words are very visual metaphors and became potent in their form as well as their meaning.
As of 2025 Carrie is currently working towards applying for a project grant to make a touring exhibition of works, hoping to generate conversations about healing through creativity, ownership of trauma through transmuting difficult memories and the positivity of allowance as a result.