Caroline Gates

Caroline Gates is an artist based in Greenville, SC. She achieved her MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2021. In 2025, she received the Founders Award at the Seven Bridges Foundation.
Gates is a figurative artist who explores themes of human connection, agency, and longing. Working in oil paint, Gates creates quiet work, examining figures or objects in psychologically charged spaces. Inspired by artists like Edward Hopper or Bo Bartlett, Gates’ images have a narrative feel, as if each piece is a mere glimpse or clip from a larger scene. She places viewers in the moment, left to decide the context on their own.

What does it take to know and be known? What does connection look like, or feel like? These questions fuel Gates' recent paintings as she explores the intangible bonds or barriers that lie between us from the female perspective. This journey has pushed her into two parallel bodies of work: one, exploring feelings of isolation within public spaces with multiple figures, and another exploring romantic relationships, navigating connection in intimate settings.
The first group of images depict figures sharing public spaces yet unable to see each other. The works use masks and balloons as symbolic objects, standing in for our inability to see beyond our own selves as we grasp fleeting hopes, ambitions, and ideals. Despite their close proximity, the figures are left profoundly alone. Yet, their hands are not tied. Each one has the opportunity to let go of the balloons, to unmask, and to engage with the people around them--if only they choose to do so.
The second group of images explores the tension and nuance between romantic figures on the cusp of connection. Some of these works retain symbolic objects, yet most rely on symbolic gesture, posture, and space. Cropped images invite viewers into specific moments, leaving them to ask what does that touch mean? When have I felt that before?