Oxmarket are delighted to welcome back Catherine Barnes in 2024. Catherine will be starting the new year with a collection of her paintings in the Wilson Gallery. Catherine studied to be an artist, firstly at Folkestone Art School in the 1960’s where the focus was on drawing, and then she gained one of a dozen places at Camberwell School of Art where she was taught painting by artists such as Anthony Eyton and Euan Uglow. Later Catherine undertook a 4 year course of History of Art at London University (Goldsmiths’ College).

Apart from Catherine’s experience of exhibiting at the Florence Biennale, the opportunity to exhibit in solo exhibitions in 2014, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2023 in her own city at the Oxmarket, has always been a highlight for Catherine and for us and every painting or artwork she allows out of her studio she considers is a hard-won image.

As for communicating, Catherine says ‘when I was seventeen and studied on the Pre-Dip course at Folkestone Art School I met Sir Kenneth Clark at his Saltwood Castle. Apart from his impressive art collection, I remember he told me  “A work of art should scoop you up and carry you away”.  I have strived all my life to create just this’. 

Catherine has never knowingly had a process as such, she says ‘a process implies that if you do one thing, and go on from there, eventually you will arrive at the end of the process. Art, I have found, is rather more wayward. Different subjects require different approaches’. “Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it” (Camille Corot 1796 – 1875).

Catherine often draws her titles from her favourite poets, and music is vital.  Catherine feels the truth art brings is the feeling that it engenders – emotion shared between the viewer and the artist. A painting is something that is added to the world, it does not necessarily have to reflect it and artists have to have credibility to be trusted with the viewer’s feelings.  So the artist has to have, as Maria Callas said, “integrity of imagination”.