Catherine Hyde, Author at CATHERINE HYDE

New print

I’m delighted to add this new print to the Catherine Hyde Shop

‘Under the crescent moon’ will be available in A2/A3 print and a small white box frame, perfect for gifting.

The original will be available in November.

October News

I am working hard on my London solo The Silver Apples at Foss Fine Art London. The show opens on the 10th of November till the 28th.

FOSSFINEART

Catherine Hyde’s highly anticipated solo show The Silver Apples of the Moon at the newly refurbished Foss Fine Art in Battersea opens on Saturday 10 November.

113b Northcote Road (entrance Wakehurst Road) London SW11 6PW
+ 44(0)207 738 0838

Private View Saturday 10th November : 12 noon – 5pm

Foss Fine Art is delighted to present this new collection of paintings by Catherine Hyde. The established artist is well known for her richly worked and atmospheric paintings and she has been described as ‘a visual poet weaving images, symbols and archetypes into paintings that resonate in the subconscious and linger there like half-remembered dreams’.

The theme of her new collection focuses on imagery drawn from the rivers and marshlands of Cornwall and from ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ by W. B. Yeats. These dreamlike paintings are quiet, suggesting stories: tree-lined river valleys filled with glimpses of hares, stags and owls and snow filled skies that thrill with the murmurations of starlings.

Equinox Special Offer

Equinox Special Offer: 10% off prints, cards and postcards until Friday 28th September

Shop here for all things Winter Solstice, Hares, Stags and Owls

Use Code: EQUINOX10 at checkout

*

Christmas Card Mixed Packs

Christmas Card

‘Winter Solstice’ and ‘Christmas Card’ Sets: 25 different cards in each pack

Winter Solstice:

Christmas Card:

£30 per set

Find these and more in the Catherine Hyde Christmas Shop

September

Gardens dreaming of summer fruit

After a long, drowsy hot summer here in Cornwall we are now at the edge of September. This morning as I fed the hungry fish in the pond I breathed in the leaf damp, mellow air that announces Autumn. I love the transitions of all the seasons but the richness of the change from August to September fills me with joy. Rich red berries on the Rowan and Hawthorn against the crisping dark leaves. Apples and pears not yet ripening but full grown.

September always feels like new beginnings to me – memories of the start of the new school year perhaps – fresh work after the dreamy slow summer.

Elementum Journal: Edition 4 ‘SHAPE’

Elementum 4 Edition 4 Shape

Elementum Journal Edition 4 Shape. I have been working with Jay Armstrong the founder of Elementum Journal for the past two years. The Journal is an unusual and beautiful soft bound book. It is full of wonderful stories and illustrations celebrating our relationship with the earth.

Elementum’s vision is to produce a publication about nurturing our connection to the natural world. Constantly inspired by the living world they believe that in better understanding it we will better understand our place within it.

This book gives the reader a space to reflect and absorb ideas away from the distractions of advertising, stories of human failing or imminent threat. Through the written word and the silence of image each edition brings together the scientist’s findings with the artist’s response to craft stories of transformation, exploration and intrigue. It asks questions as well as seeking to answer them, retaining curiosity and always a sense of wonder at the unknown and unseen.

Guided by a different theme for each edition, Elementum is published twice a year.

I have worked on all four editions and hope to carry on contributing in the future. In this latest edition I have explored the architecture of Whitney Browns essay about the Elan Valley in Wales, combining the rigour of construction with the power and weight of water and the wildlife around it.

: Flora and fauna Elan Valley

: Below the Elan Dam

: Elan valley dam with kite

Summer Collection

The Summer Collection

There are lots of new and colourful original works on paper now in The Mistletoe Tree Shop and some new mounted prints.

True North Gallery Interview

A chance to read again the interview/article by Belinda Recio from The True North Gallery in Hamilton, Massachusetts about my work and process.

“UK artist Catherine Hyde works with layers of paint, pastel, gold and silver leaf, and mica to create dreamlike imagery that explores the interplay between animals, landscape and imagination. We represent Catherine at True North and we love her work. I had the chance to interview Catherine—about her art and the role that nature plays in it.

BR: Your work is filled with archetypal and ecological imagery from nature—animals, trees, night, dusk, dawn, water, stars, the moon, seasonal cycles and more. Animals in particular appear again and again in your work: the stag, hare, owl, crow and fish. What inspires you to paint these animals? Do you feel in some way personally connected to them or to the symbolism they embody?

CH: I love all the animals I paint, for themselves and their beauty. I try to convey their essence in my paintings. I also paint animals I know and have observed in the English landscape. To view them you need to be quiet and unobtrusive. I find it deeply thrilling—a gift—to chance upon a stag or see an owl fly by. The encounter heightens my own connection with nature, and I become part of the story.

BR: In honor of spring, and the hare’s association with fertility, we are featuring a special selection of your hare paintings in our online gallery. As a nocturnal animal that is seen mostly at dawn and dusk, the hare is associated with the magic attributed to these “border” times when our eyes can play tricks on us. Is this one of the reasons that hares appeal to you, and is this why they appear so frequently in your work? What does the hare mean to you?

CH: I am fascinated by the mythology and symbolism surrounding animals. The hare is perhaps one of my favorite creatures and I use it in my art for many purposes—for its fertility and mysterious movements in the landscape, but also to suggest stillness and contemplation. It has become very much an image of self—at times quiet and unobtrusive, and at others flying between earth and air, occupying its own dimension.

BR: In traditional totemic cultures, a totem animal is perceived and experienced as a guide, protector, or relative. In popular usage, a “totem animal” is an animal that offers personal guidance or inspiration through its attributes and symbolism. Do the animals you paint have a totemic resonance for you? Do you have a “totem” animal?

CH: At one time I could have said the hare was my main totem animal, but in maturity I am suspecting that the owl is, too.

BR: I would like to ask you about your wonderfully poetic titles. They add another layer of meaning to your work, and often shape the narrative of the imagery. How important are titles to you, and which comes first: the title or the painting?

CH: Poetry is very important to me. I love the visual impact of words, so sometimes the words for a painting are there before the art, and sometimes they come later, when I have had a chance to consider what I have created. I like to use titles to enhance and suggest. Some painters are not concerned about this and would regard titles as completely irrelevant—and possibly even bad practice—but I have always been aware that both words and images are a fundamental part of who I am, and I need both elements to express myself.

BR: You have explained that your work explores the liminal spaces that “lie between dream and consciousness, land and water, earth and sky, dusk and dawn.” Liminal spaces are often described as “betwixt and between,” or “no-longer but not-yet.” They are indeterminate places or states in which objects, events, sensations, or thoughts have yet to fully take shape. Can you tell us about a couple of your paintings that are especially liminal and what inspired them?

CH: My painting “Full Moon at the Edge of the Silver Dawn” comes to mind. It is based on the River Helford in Cornwall, which is a tidal inlet. It is a deeply magical place, with steep banks of trees coming down to the waters edge. It is very much a place of meeting points. I became quite obsessed with the shift between the water line and the land. The hare in the painting acts as a vehicle of movement in the implied stillness of the water and the landscape. She is airborne. The fish lies under the water. The band of mist above her conceals and reveals stars, the moon, and a small stag high on the hill. My intention was to capture the moment in-between, when the world is in suspension.

Another painting, “The Still Earth” is a dawn image, and again, there is an “above” and “below.” The owl moves with its own purpose into the light and the hare is of the earth, running to a different story. They are connected and not connected. The landscape is still, and the boundary between earth and air is abstracted. The line is wavering, suggesting points where one can become part of the other.

BR: I think that liminal quality is what people like best about your work. In fairy tales, liminal spaces are often where magic happens or where one can discover a “door” between worlds. Your paintings feel like that—like portals between landscape and imagination—where nature is still enchanted, and anything can happen.”