Catherine Headley

Catherine Headley graduated from Bath Academy of Art in the late 1970’s where, under the mentoring of Adrian Heath, she developed a strong linear style of organic sensual imagery derived from drawings of herself, combined with oil glazes. At the same time she developed her skill in landscape watercolours, which came out of the oils; watercolour also being a linear activity, combined with washes rather than glazes of colour.

In the late 1980’s Headley met Trevor Tanser, also a painter, who opened her eyes to the painterly tradition of Sickert, Seago and Bernard Dunstan.  After a solo show in 1992 of her organic cartoon-like oils and surreal watercolours, she changed course and embarked on a path of painterly mark-making.  She was now drawn to De Stael, Rothko, Edward Hopper’s landscapes, Roger Hilton and Barbara Rae.

Catherine Headley’s paintings are distillations of her experience of the landscape. She walks in the Rutland countryside near her home and in West Penwith in Cornwall, and has developed her own visual language of enigmatic imagery.  She she draws on this when juxtaposing carefully considered fields of colour: standing stones, irregular rectangles, cup shapes, symbols from ancient languages and tribal art and most recently, after visiting Cornwall in spring 2009, the universal half-crescent or boat shape. 

 Headley has had work accepted by the Royal Academy nine times for the Summer Exhibition. She has a studio in Stamford Arts Centre in Lincolnshire and is a member of Leicester Print Workshop where she enjoys the graphic expression evident in her carborundum collagraphs and drypoints.

Artist’s Statement

“I try to achieve the freedom of expression of a child’s painting, but it’s never easy; one can labour on a series of paintings for hours or weeks but it’s rarely the laboured paintings that are a success. Then one starts a new work and this goes relatively easily, from one stage to the next and suddenly, eureka! a moment of recognition; like a drug; the reason one does it; that thrill when you recognise something; it’s your voice and yet you’ve never spoken it.  It’s a relief, a short lived elation then, off you go again, in to the unknown.”

Selected Recent Exhibitions

2010

Spring Print Show, Bircham Gallery, Holt, Norfolk

2009

Residency, Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall (also  2001)
Passion2Print, Leicester Print Workshop touring exhibition (also 2008, 2007)
December Show, Belgrave Gallery
Winter Show, Stoneman Gallery, Chapel Street, Penzance
Summer Exhibition, Bircham Gallery, Holt
Woodbine Contemporary Art, Uppingham
Affordable Art Fair, Amsterdam, Battersea, Edinburgh Art Fair
Leicester City Gallery Open (also in 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 1995)

2008

Originals 08 Print Show, Mall Galleries, London
Affordable Art Fair, with Woodbine Gallery, Battersea
New Artists Exhibition, Bircham Gallery, Holt, Norfolk
Great Atlantic Gallery, St Just, Cornwall (regularly from 2001)
International Small Print/Big Impression Touring Exhibition, curated by Leicester Print Workshop (also 2007)
December Show, Belgrave Gallery

Email: headleycatherine@aol.com
Year elected member: 2007

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