Dates

• Existence: 1937 - 2009

Biography

Barbara Caruso was born in Kincardine, Ontario, Canada, in 1937. She was first and foremost a visual artist, whose preferred self-descriptor was ‘painter’. She also wrote poetry, and, for a decade, ran Seripress. In 1965 she married Nelson Ball, poet, publisher, and later bookseller, who founded the small poetry press Weed/Flower and whom she always referred to as ‘my poet’.

In 1967 the couple moved to Toronto, where Caruso became involved in the poetry scene which was newly emerging there. During the years when she was painting, Caruso designed covers for little magazines and for Coach House Press and Weed/Flower Press. Over the course of her life Caruso exhibited her large-scale canvases in galleries and museums in Canada, the United States, and Europe. One of her major projects, developed between 1969 and 1983, was the Colour Lock paintings, comprising nine series (141 paintings in total). Her intense preoccupation with colour and line in the paintings of this period informed her collaborations with bpNichol, and manifested itself in the Seripress books.

Found in 2 Collections and/or Records: