Welcome to my website

wMy focus is on how we cope in the everyday and I do this as a research psychologist and an artist, working in both fields for the past 20 years. This website summaries these careers and looks at the links between them.  You can follow me on Instagram as Catherine5524.  #everydaycoping #everydaycontexts #psychologicalworks

My art practice is mainly photographic, but I also make  short video works, mixed media paintings and occasionally sculptural works.  Most images and objects are made in the studio from experimental processes using domestic material such as body creams, office stationary, food items that are made to move, or are suspended for the camera. I  don't use photoshop, preferring to work with the tactile to make works. The photographs are usually large scale 100cm + and shown without frames,  mounted on aluminium. My paintings are small-scale and often a mixture of art materials and domestic substances such as nail varnish or polyfiller. My sculptures are found objects that are transformed with other materials. 

Movement is important in the works, as is uncertain framing, the landscape genre and macro micro scaling which all combine to create opened-ended, ambiguous, perhaps slower works that leave space for viewer interpretation.  

Psychological coping​ is central to my practice and my art  works all have psychological titles to guide them. Past themes have been engaging  with uncertainty, thinking about distance, attachment and proximity in relationships, and thinking about the role of contemporary art in offering metaphors and a space to process  overwhelming issues such as ecological concerns.  

Current studio works

My new Everyday Awe series is exploring the psychological impacts of awe in our everyday experiences. I'm also researching and thinking about the impact of people leaving earth and travelling to mars in A Mindset of Mars, which is looking like it might become a book project. I'm also working with images to aid our consideration of  time perception and scarcity mindsets.  

All these new works are made from photographing everyday household materials,  or by making paintings which are created just for the camera. 

Short biography

My work has been shown in institutions (including a solo show at mac, the midlands arts centre), commercial galleries  (including Flowers Gallery, Sarah Mysercough Fine Art), at photo festivals  (Herefordshire Photography Festival,  Photo LA) and many artist-led spaces (Lewisham Art House, Whitstable Bienalle Satellite,  APT gallery,  Norwich Arts Centre, Elysium Gallery, Swansea).  I've also held residencies at the Florence Trust (2002-3), on a working sheep farm in Constable country (Rural Idyll, 2011) and in 2006 I ran Viewfinder, a £10k landscape photography  residency for Redbridge NHS Trust working with patients of a cancer ward to revisit and photograph their favourite landscape scene in the UK.

Lockdown works

I also make photographic works outside the studio and take portraits  During the current Covid crisis i've made work in response to call outs by Format Photographic Festival and Impressions Gallery regarding the #massisolationproject  and under the hashtag #Covid19artistsathome.  I've also made work in response to Groundwork Gallery's #doorstepenvironment challenge and sold with the wonderful #artistsupportpledge set up by artist Mathew Burrows to help artists during the pandemic.