Catharine Somerville
Painter Catharine Somerville began her art education studying set design, printmaking and painting at Georgian College and York University, Toronto. A few years later, she had the opportunity to sail in the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic and up and down the east coast of the USA. Travelling allowed her to explore nature and local culture through drawing and painting.
After settling in the UK, Somerville built Herringbroom Studio in a converted threshing barn near Petworth. There she began teaching and holding lectures with visiting tutors. In 2000, she studied Arts and Humanities at the Open University with the aim of developing critical thinking while exploring human culture and philosophy.
In 2006 she began a Fine Art Graduate Diploma at West Dean College at the University of Sussex. During her second year she did a residency at the Edward James Sculpture Garden in Las Pozas, a subtropical rainforest in the Sierra Gorda mountains of Mexico. Being surrounded by that stunning landscape she was able to indulge in her love of colour to depict the natural world.
Somerville’s painting practice focuses on bearing witness to the nature that surrounds her and represents the shifting energy of sky, sea, and land. She writes: “I believe painting is not an object but a visual experience of our sensual reaction to the colours and surface of a work of art”. Her work is usually begun ‘en plein air’ through sketches in oil or watercolour. These provide the starting point for studio work.
She has recently moved back to Canada full-time, and is working out of her studio in Port Dalhousie, Ontario. Somerville continues to lecture, teach, and participate in artist residencies internationally. She has work, paintings and prints in corporate collections in Ontario including the YMCA, The Elmwood Spa, Kanata Research Park Corp and Thomson Reuters. Her work is in corporate collections in the UK at The Donald Wilson Neuro Rehabilitation Centre, West Dean College, and Katie's Lymphoedema Fund. This is in addition to many private collections in both Canada and the UK. She continues to exhibit in both the UK and Canada.
