Welcome!

My name is Catherine Mooney and I have been under the spell of painting and drawing for most of my life, finding my deepest fulfilment when I’m mixing colours in my studio and applying them to a canvas.

I trained as an illustrator and studied oil painting at the Norfolk Painting School, so I like to think that the threads of both styles of working find their way onto my canvases. I tend to start a piece in a fairly classical way, drawing on what I’ve learned from the time-honoured techniques of the old masters, building a painting steadily through applications of layers of glazes and balancing colour and values. However the illustrator in me likes to work quickly with a sense of spontaneity and fun, so there are lots of lively flourishes in my work. Hopefully these convey the vivacity of a moment rather than something frozen in time.

As far as my subject is concerned, I enjoy painting landscapes and people. A broad brief, I know, but they have something quite particular in common before which I stand in awe. Nature has spent millions of years configuring a particular fold of hills over which clouds brood and shadows drift, conforming to the shape of the land, even as they are shifting. I love this meld of the unimaginably ancient with the momentary fleetingness of the light, and I try to convey this in my paintings.

People have an equivalent quality, which I also try to depict. There is something very special in the moment where a lifetime of living and learning takes flight. This can be seen when a musician plays their chosen instrument, or when a parent cradles their newborn child. As with million year old landscapes and passing clouds, this moment is both fleeting and eternal. I live for those moments in my life as in my painting, and I am happy to report I find them more often than I perhaps deserve.