Catherine grew up among the moors and dales of Northern England and earned her BFA at a college near London. Relocating across continents—from England to California and, more recently, Austin, Texas—has continually challenged her sense of belonging while opening a portal into broader human experiences of displacement and migration. She works in London and Austin.
Her work references history, specificities of place and time, and the relative stability of geology, using poetic layers of imagery to explore deep time and the moving earth. She draws inspiration from Arte Povera in Italy, with its use of so-called “poor” materials drawn from the land in resistance to technological dominance, as well as from Land Art movements led by artists such as Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, Herman de Vries and Olafur Eliasson, These influences serve as enduring directives in her practice.
Catherine’s paintings juxtapose visual and conceptual influences gathered from time spent in untamed landscapes across California, Peru, England, Ireland, France, and, most notably, Iceland, where she has completed two artist residencies.
After receiving her MFA from John F. Kennedy University in Berkeley, California, she was awarded the Sonoma County Emerging Artist Award for Locale, a year-long project studying marshland ecosystems while living in an abandoned dairy building. In 2018, her Icescapes series received a First Prize monetary award from the Visions of Science exhibition at Bath Spa University, England, for its exploration of rapidly changing Arctic conditions.
Residencies remain vital intervals within her practice. She will attend The Hide in the Cotswolds in 2025, followed by a residency in Italy in 2026. Her work is held in public and private collections, including universities in Bath, England, and Sonoma County, California, as well as private collections throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.
Statement
A practice rooted in the poetics of place, the ecology of care, and the quiet of observation.
My work explores how landscape holds memory — how belonging can be felt, lost, and rediscovered through material and attention. I’m drawn to sites where the natural and the human intersect: industry on rural land, abandoned quarries, former mines, and altered terrains that still pulse with life.
Through a process that includes walking, collecting, and working with organic materials, I investigate how the act of observation can itself be restorative. Recent projects engage with phytoremediation — the use of plants to detoxify contaminated ground — as both an ecological process and a poetic metaphor for healing and renewal.
Each piece invites a slowing down, a return to the senses, and a reconnection with the earth beneath our feet. The works are not representations of landscape, but collaborations with it — material meditations on care, time, and transformation.
I primarily work on large-scale paintings and drawings, but I keep my artwork sizes varied. Constantly exploring and experimenting with watery mixes of acrylic and/or inks i make from locally foraged flora when possible; allowing them to find their gravity on the surface. I encourage these forms into shapes echoed in the land forms, aiming to convey the intrigue I recall from my experience of being immersed in wild and remote places.
My work is a reflection of the mystery and beauty of the Earth's forces, inviting viewers to contemplate their own connection to the land and the deep time it represents. Through art-making, I aim to evoke a sense of wonder and respect for the ever-changing, powerful forces that shape our world.