Primarily self-taught, Watson was initially committed to an intense drawing and painting practice before experimenting with three-dimensional making to expand her art capabilities and her understanding of her own painting process.

In contrast to the purposeful looseness and immediacy of her drawings, Watson’s sculptural responses make explicit the contemplative and multilayered nature of her work.

Drawn to a theory of defamiliarization,  Watson’s practice employs labour-intensive methods, and a repetitive physicality to reconstruct symbols of nostalgia and memory. Engaging the handcrafts of stitching, textiles, and assemblage, Carolyn uses these methods as an act of physical extension to elicit instinctive manifestations of her observations and her own behaviour patterns.

 Watson shifts between two and three-dimensional modes, resulting in bodies of work that echo her recurring motifs of natural history, found imagery and personal memory.

Watson’s artistry remakes the natural anew,  resulting in an enigmatic coalescence between the Totemic and ritualistic, the posturing and pretend.