11x11x3
Mixed Media
Made in 2021
 
About the Artist
Born and raised in Toronto, Catherine Gutsche earned her Bachelor of Fine Art degree at York University in 1980. She creates mostly non-representational compositions, often alluding to forms in nature but highly abstracted, driven by a need to “engage my mind”. Freed from limits of realism, her interest is in colour, line and texture. She works with acrylic paints, oils combined with cold wax and mixed media. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Ottawa, Kingston and Toronto and is held in private collections in Canada, the UK, and the US. Catherine currently works from her studio in rural Ottawa. In 2022 Catherine created a solo installation called “Improv” at the Sivarulrasa Gallery in Almonte where she has been represented since 2019. In 2023 the Sivarulrasa Gallery hosted another solo exhibition called "News Blues" featuring Catherine's most recent works. Catherine is a self-described process painter. She’s inspired by her surroundings; awestruck by nature’s transient characteristics and processes, finding beauty in how nature presents and transforms itself including its imperfections. It’s not her nature to expect order in her environment; nature’s eccentricities challenge her to create her own order; her own ordinary. Paint takes Catherine on an intuitive journey with colour and texture, working with layers revealed through scratching back, rubbing away or lifting, to bring back the history of the previous layers. Catherine does not replicate nature; she is inspired by nature’s improvisation and opens herself up to its influences.