Catherine Beale

Biography

I am a painter specialising in light-filled watercolours applied using my loose method of 'gravity painting'. My book 'Capturing light - creating radiant landscapes in watercolour' (Search Press Ltd 2023) explains my approach in detail and takes you through step-by-step in nine landscape painting projects. My new landscape paintings first appear at my bi-annual solo exhibition in Bath and First-View Gallery, Stourhead in Wiltshire. I am also drawn to larger-than-life sized head and shoulder portrait commissions where there is space for watercolours to flow and “sing”. I use new, rigid painting supports that freeze the movement of my watercolours through water as they rush across the surface unhindered by buckling. My portraits hang each year in London's Mall Galleries in the Society of Women Artists Annual Exhibition of which I am a member. My painting practice began in Singapore in the 90s where the vibrant colours of everyday life influenced my paintings. After my return to the UK in 2006, I opened my own studio/gallery in the World Heritage City of Bath, England. I now paint daily from my hillside studio. My wet-in-wet watercolours are equally able to capture commissioned portraits and ephemeral weather events in the Somerset landscape - sunbeams, cloudscapes and mobile mists. My paintings hang in private collections worldwide, including the Singapore Presidential Palace and have been gifted to HRH Prince Edward by the British High Commission in Singapore. I have exhibited with the Royal Watercolour Society and Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour. I share my painting techniques at art centres such as Bristol's Royal West of England Academy and Cornwall School of Art, in my own Bath Watercolour Workshops and with art groups across Southern England and Wales.