Catherine Luce

Exploring dreams, the fantastical and the slightly surreal are elements that keep me engaged with painting and sculpture. I enjoy creating visual stories with interesting characters both human and animal. The landscape and wildlife around Muskoka and Algonquin Park is an inspiration for this work and my landscape paintings.

Much of my work in which I have explored the surreal has been in watercolours, a medium that can create atmospheric, moody effects. After sketching out characters I often create a background landscape with a loose wet in wet approach, exploring ways I can create light, clouds and mist to add interest to the painting. To paint the characters a more controlled technique of transparent glazes is needed. I love to add expressive lines with a brush or quill pen to create lost and found edges to give movement, feeling and depth.

The papier mache sculpture pieces began as a project for Nuit Blanche which has been the catalyst for other projects including marionettes and smaller, fantastical sculptures. After form is created with a wire armature, paper and glue strips are applied and dried in layers. Texture is often added after the final layer with paper clay and finally painted with house paint and acrylic.

I am pleased to have be chosen for Huntsville Festival of The Arts image maker of 2016. I enjoy commissioned work and sell prints, cards and originals at my home studio “Mystical Woods Studio” in Huntsville and online at www.catherineluce.com