Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Catriona Herd: 'Nature: Catching the Colour'












Catriona Herd

‘Nature: Catching the Colour’ Exhibition

During my Pace days I took two journalism classes: Features and News. (I did well with Features. And perhaps my writing was too whimsical for News.) Anyhow, the professor who taught those classes is Mark McSherry. Yeah, I guess he’s a “big hat” in journalism, and when you put that accomplishment out there on it’s own, it’s impressive. Then, when ya factor in that McSherry’s wife, Catriona Herd, the internationally known painter, I can’t help but think, what an awesome pair

 So, when I got word that Catriona was having an exhibition at the Broom Street Gallery, there was no decision, there was just, I have to go to that.  (I love when different aspects of life connect or overlap.)

At the exhibition I learned that Catriona studied at Scotland’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. At Duncan Catriona learned how to exact color, meaning, when Catriona looks at a sunset, she doesn’t see orange, she sees the 23 variations of orange. Hence the title of the exhibition. Also another reason why color is so important is because, "Scottish painters tend to use color since it's grey a lot of the time. You don't get color there.” (McSherry) (And that was a -- that is so logical I didn't think it -- moment.)

What Catriona primarily tends to paint are figures (portraits) and landscapes. But, due to this spring’s blossoms in Brooklyn, Catriona was inspired to create a series of flowers in bloom paintings. And as for the technique, all paintings are based off of plein air sketches. (Plein air sketching: When Catriona puts a painting of a lake frozen over on display that means she sat outside in the cold until she was pleased with a sketch. Honestly I think each painting should be sold with a few pages of what was experienced for the work.)

Now wanna hear the romantic part about all this? Catriona (And family) travel for sketches. According to McSherry, If she runs out of sketches she gets really grumpy, so we have to make a trip. Fortunately her Scottish friends tend to live in Portugal, or France, and we go to visit, and when she's there she does a lot of sketches.”    So when you see a painting of an old house in Portugal, it’s cuz Catriona found an old house in Portugal that said something to her. I can’t really explain how happy that makes me without getting whimsical about it. It’s like living a dream..But is it still a dream when you’re living it?

Yeah, I’m really glad that I went and saw. Unfortunately you won’t be able to see it as I did, but if you wanna take a look, or go shopping I'm inviting you to visit Catriona's Website.

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