ABOUT CATHERINE HYDE
Award-winning artist Catherine Hyde trained in Fine Art Painting at The Central School of Art in London. She is renowned for her mythopoetic paintings and lyrical books. Her atmospheric work is rendered with a poetic sensitivity and draws on mythology and folklore to explore the nuanced intersections between the natural world and the internal landscape.
Originating from Greek, mythopoetic means "myth-making" or creating narratives. It is an approach to art where the artist invents their own symbols, creatures, and stories to explore identity, memory, and existential themes, rather than retelling established ancient myths. The artist is not just the producer of an image, but a participant within it, acting as a shaman or storyteller, often using their personal mythology to heal or find stability.
Delicate and dreamlike but firm and not at all fey...there is poetry and passion in her painting….as intoxicating as it is intriguing — Frank Ruhrmund
b.1960 Dartford, Kent
1978/9: Foundation studies, Medway College of Design, Kent
1979/82: BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting, Central School of Art, London
Technique and Materials
Catherine works with acrylic on canvas using the repeated layering of paint to represent the 'adding and subtracting' of memory and meaning. She further builds the surface with metal leaf, mica flakes, coins, and seeds to connect the work to themes of earth, decay, and renewal.
Themes and Imagery
Her work frequently explores thresholds — the liminal spaces between waking and dreaming, dusk and dawn, life and death. In her paintings of flora and fauna, she uses archetypal imagery such as the Hare, Stag, Fish, the Green Man, and the Crow to create narratives and suggest stories.
About the Hare
'It is the otherness of the hare that interests me, their elusiveness, their mythology. For many years, I have employed the earthy magic of the hare as a symbol in my paintings. I see the hare as a conduit, representing freedom and wildness, marking the seasons and pulling the year along. In many of my earlier pieces, it has been a contemplative symbol of fertility. In more recent work, it is a shapeshifter, a witch, the watcher in the landscape. It has always been an expression of the restlessness of my creative energy.'