ABOUT CATHERINE HYDE

There is poetry and passion in her painting....as intoxicating as it is intriguing — Frank Ruhrmund

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.

Themes & 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 employs archetypal imagery using the Hare, Stag, Fish, Crow, and Owl 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 its earthy magic 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.'

Technique & Materials

She works primarily 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.

Early Life & Influences

I grew up in the ancient port town of Gravesend in North Kent, a more urban than rural childhood with the freedom, as was common in the late sixties, to roam and play outside all day. This, combined with a home full of books, visits to museums and galleries, and outings to castles and prehistoric sites, was rich fuel for my imagination.

As a child, I was lucky enough to be a precocious reader. I galloped through Grimm (with terror at my heels), constantly revisited the melancholy world of Hans Christian Andersen, and gleefully recited the poetry of AA Milne and Spike Milligan. I read everything but as I grew older found I was most drawn to writers like John Masefield, L.M. Boston, Eleanor Farjeon, Elizabeth Goudge, C.S. Lewis, and the mighty Alan Garner – stories infused with layers of myth, archetype and magic.

Having studied A-level Art, English Literature, and History, I trained in Fine Art Painting at the Central School of Art in London. After three hard but amazing years, during which I learned how to paint and how to make mistakes, I was only certain that I was ready to leave city life.

Cornwall & My Practice

The move from London, exchanging city noise for the quiet of trees and gardens, was like a balm. I went back to drawing: jugs of flowers, baskets of apples, patterned fabrics, my family, myself, the cat. As I worked and walked, finding the cycles of the lengthening and shortening days reassuring, I slowed down and tuned into myself. I read, becoming increasingly fascinated by folklore, the Green Man, and the earthy magic of the hare. I discovered Ted Hughes, Robert Graves, John Cowper Powys, and looked afresh at the Neo-Romantic painters of the 20th century.

Being in the landscape, my paintings and drawings began to fill with symbols and archetypes, both real and imagined, layering meanings, creating atmosphere. Above all, I fell in love with the liminal space between twilight and dusk, dawn and sunrise, where the edges of the world seem tremulous and uncertain.

My husband and I moved to Cornwall with our children twenty-five years ago, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Our deep love and connection to the Cornish landscape, its coast, rivers and wonderful light are a constant source of inspiration and joy.

Bio

b.1960 Dartford, Kent.

Foundation, Medway College of Design, 1978/9.

BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting, Central School of Art, London, 1979–82.

Selected Galleries

Catherine's work has been exhibited and represented by galleries including Beaux Arts, Bath; Foss Fine Art, London; Lighthouse Gallery, Penzance; and Iona House Gallery, Woodstock.

My Books

With my love of books, poetry, and children's literature, I have always been drawn toward Fine Art Illustration. In 2009, I was asked to create a series of paintings in response to Carol Ann Duffy's fairytale, The Princess's Blankets, which won the English Association Best Illustrated Book Award. Being asked to respond to a text in this way added another depth to my work and led to collaborations with Jackie Morris (Little Evie in the Wild Wood - nominated for the Kate Greenaway Award), Saviour Pirotta (Firebird - nominated for the Kate Greenway Award) and Lauren St John (The Snow Angel), giving me the confidence to start working on four books of my own.

Darkling, The Owl's Song (Apollo, 2024) — Shortlisted for the Holyer an Gof Award for Poetry 2025

The Bee and the Sun (Zephyr, 2021) — Winner of the Holyer an Gof Award for Poetry 2022

The Hare and the Moon (Zephyr)

The Star Tree (Frances Lincoln) — Shortlisted for the 2017 Cambridgeshire Children's Picture Book Award; Nominated for The Kate Greenaway Award

You can find fine art prints of some of the illustrations from my books here.