Catherine Cazalet

“Almost perversely, my favourite season is the darker winter months. In these months, I’m forced to exaggerate my saturated palate, to create the light and joy of the composition. In the depths of January, there are less rules about natural light and I’m gifted a freedom of creativity within.”

Preferred Light: Studio Light, combining artificial with natural.

Catherine’s interest and use of saturated colour obscures her more subtle relationship to light. Her vibrant, geometric scenes in fact celebrate a flatter and absence of rules that is not based on reality. When light is supposed in her abstract landscapes, it is an imaginary source with the purpose of giving an extra reference to structure but also a sense of joy.

This imaginary light source in Catherine’s paintings always comes from the left - a hangover from her training in neo-classical, architectural gilding. Whilst etching onto glass or mirrors using the verre eglomise technique, light was always inferred from the left in the cross-hatched design.