BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
I was born in Sheffield in 1980 and grew up in the rural outskirts of Stocksbridge, a small town to the northwest of the city. Following school A-levels, I completed an Art Foundation diploma at Chesterfield college, leading on to a degree in Fine Art at Bath School of Art & Design (1999-2002). During these formative years at college and university, I began exploring nature & landscape as subject matter and how I could evoke and map my own experiences of specific places and moments in time via painting, drawing & printmaking.
In 2002, I moved back to my home town to undertake a Masters in Landscape Design at the University of Sheffield, combining my interest in outdoor space and the environment with a desire for a career in the creative sector. I joined Camlin Lonsdale Landscape Architects (www.camlinlonsdale.com) in August 2005 and have been involved in a wide range of exciting projects, from the strategic masterplanning of an inner-city neighbourhood to the restoration of a motte and bailey castle site. Since then, I have combined a career working as a Landscape Architect with the pursuit of my own artwork practice. Other activities include a current tutoring role at the University of Sheffield's Landscape Department, focusing on art-based approaches to landscape design.
ARTWORK
Drawing is a medium I love and it is fundamental to my work. Drawn marks are used within my paintings and prints, as a tool for developing ideas and sketching on site, and of course as a medium in its own right. Although each piece derives from a specific place, journey or experience, my artwork aims to provoke an emotional response in the viewer; to draw them into the surface of the work and encourage individual interpretation....a microscopic sample of earth, an aerial view from a plane window?
My artwork also explores the following threads: ...mapping, marks, traces, memory, transcience, light, shadow, passage of time, seasons, the sublime, distillation/essence of a place, change, constancy, cycles, layers, erosion, erasure, weathering, renewing, recurring, familiar landscapes, new/alien landscapes, imaginary places, micro - macro scales, glimpses, blocked - channelled views, expansive vistas, lines, edges...
SELECT EXHIBITIONS:
Group Exhibition at Beady Eye Art, Fulwood, March, 2011.
Open Up Sheffield, Sheffield Cathedal, June 2010 & 2011
The Art of Listening, Kelham Island, Sheffield, February 2010
Mural, Kettlebridge Doorstep Green, Sheffield, Aug 2005 (Community Project)
Cupola Gallery, Drawing Exhibition (1st Prize ) Sheffield, Feb 2003
Summer Show, Cooper Gallery, Barnsley, Summer 2002
Truman Brewery, London, July 2002
Sion Hill, Bath degree show, May-June 2002
Northern Lights Exhibition, Walcot Chapel, Bath, October 2001
Group Show at Windows Art Centre, Bath, June 2001
The Hotbath Gallery, Bath, Oct 2000
INSPIRATIONAL ARTISTS:
Cy Twombly
Antoni Tapies
Anselm Kiefer
Vija Celmins
Alfred Wallis
Terry Frost
Peter Lanyon
Callum Innes
Helen Frankenthaler
Ian McKeever
Therese Oulton
Peter Doig
James Turrell
Norman Ackroyd
Hamish Fulton
John Virtue
Casper David Friedrich
Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
Joseph M.W. Turner
Paul Klee
For commissions - to suit any size wall or budget - or for upcoming exhibitions, please contact me by email: catherine@cjhigham.co.uk