About
CATHERINE HYDE
“She is, if you will, a visual poet weaving images, symbols and archetypes into paintings that resonate in the subconscious and linger there like half-remembered dreams or the dark fairy stories with which she has such affiliation”
Pip Palmer, Galleries Magazine
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CATHERINE HYDE is an artist, writer, and award-winning Illustrator. She trained in Fine Art Painting at The Central School of Art in London and is represented by The Lighthouse Gallery, Penzance and Foss Fine Art, London.
Over the past ten years, her practice has extended into illustration. All of her picture books have been nominated for the prestigious Kate Greenaway Award and she was the winner of The English Association Best Illustrated Book Award (Key Stage 2) for The Princess’ Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy.
She has both written and illustrated two books: ‘The Hare and the Moon: a calendar of paintings’ (Zephyr: Head of Zeus, published October 3rd, 2019) and ‘The Star Tree’: published 2016 (Frances Lincoln)
Alongside her paintings and illustrations, she runs her own greeting cards business producing reproductions of her work and creates fine quality Giclee prints which she sells worldwide.
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“I am constantly exploring the liminal spaces that lie between dream and consciousness, land and water, earth and sky and attempting to capture the landscape in a state of suspension.
I use symbols that are both universal and personal: Archetypal animals, such as the hare, stag and owl are all associated with many layers of myth and history and in my paintings, they appear as emblems of wildness and fertility. The hare, in particular, is a highly personal symbol that I have used in my work for many years. It is a mysterious and ancient creature and I often use it as an image of stillness and contemplation but I also love its wiry speed and ability to exist as if in flight, neither earth nor air – pure energy, pure wildness: sheer earthy magic.
My landscapes are simple and semi-abstracted and usually tonally dark and mellow. I build the surface with layers of paint, gels and glazes, suspending gold and copper leaf, mica flakes, sea glass and shells. Hidden within the images are suggestions of the poet in the landscape – the lit house among the trees, a small figure in a boat or a solitary figure against the horizon. Sometimes sheets of colour and sunlight flood the surface leaving pools of gold and shadow, fleeting suggestions of heat and light or approaching weather.
Against the stillness of my landscapes, it is the implied movements and cyclical journeys of the animals, fish and birds that act as the narrative vehicle that binds the elements and the seasons together within the paint.”
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MIXED AND SOLO SHOWS
Ainscough Contemporary London
Beaux Art Bath
Bishop Philpotts Truro
Lemon Street Gallery Truro
Charleston Farmhouse Sussex
Easton Rooms Rye
Elementum Gallery, Sherborne
Falmouth Art Gallery
Foss Fine Art London
Fowey River Gallery
Illustration Cupboard London
Iona House Gallery Woodstock
John Noott Gallery, Broadway
Lion House Gallery Suffolk
Lighthouse Gallery Penzance
Mall Galleries London
New Leaf Gallery Monmouth
Rostra Gallery Bath
Rye Art Gallery Sussex
Singing Soul Gallery Cranbrook
True North Gallery Massachusetts
Twenty Twenty Gallery Much Wenlock
Wetpaint Gallery Cirencester
ILLUSTRATION
2019: Author/Illustrator: ‘The Hare and the Moon: a book of paintings’ (Zephyr/Head of Zeus)
2016 – 2019: Commissioned illustrations: Editions 1 – 5 Elementum Journal
2017: Cover and interior illustrations: ‘The Snow Angel’ (Zephyr) Lauren St John
2016: Author/Illustrator: ‘The Star Tree’ (Frances Lincoln)
Shortlisted for the 2017 Cambridgeshire Children’s Picture Book Award Nominated for The Kate Greenaway Award
2014: Illustration: ‘Over the hills and far away’ Elizabeth Hammill
2013: Illustrator: ‘Little Evie in the Wild Wood’ by Jackie Morris (Frances Lincoln)
Nominated for the Kate Greenaway Award
2010: Illustrator: ‘Firebird’ by Saviour Pirrotta (Templar Publishing)
Awarded an Aesop Accolade by the American Folklore Society
Nominated for the Kate Greenaway Award
2009: Illustrator: ‘The Princess’s Blankets’ by Carol Ann Duffy (Templar Publishing)
Winner of the English Association Best Illustrated book Key Stage 2 Nominated for UKLA and The Kate Greenaway Award.
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“Catherine’s work has always been closely connected to Nature and storytelling. Understanding the language of ancient symbols she enhances this fairytale with her signature images. Ethereal figures, leaping hares and bounding stags, lurking fish and devious ravens, the waxing and waning moon, the burnished suns and distant planets and dark ochre pomegranates, the fruits of Hades, are woven into their fabric like a glorious medieval tapestry.” Peta Jane Field, Inside Cornwall Magazine – The Princess’ Blankets by Carol Ann Duffy.
Studio shots in the header slider by kind permission of Jay Armstrong Photography
