About - Catherine Beale

The Artist Magazine award, Society of Women Artists – Photograph by Ed Sepple 2013

I am a painter specialising in light-filled watercolour. I love that it is such a mobile medium and maximise its fluid properties for my work. This slideshow of my paintings highlights watercolours’ shape-shifting qualities which I push to the full with my ‘gravity painting’ techniques. (Music by Robbie and Dominic Beale.) I write regularly for The Artist Magazine, explaining my slightly unusual painting style – wet-in-wet tilted on a slope and mixing directly on my painting. You can sign up to my workshop newsletter here and discover more about my painting methods, be first to hear about future Bath Watercolour Workshop dates and exhibition news (six issues per year).

My painting practice began thirty years ago in Singapore with a series of architectural studies in oils. Prints of these disappearing buildings sold out at art fairs, in galleries and Changi Airport. In 1998 I was invited to hold my first solo exhibition at the British High Commissioner’s Official Residence. At the same time I created pencil portraits for clients and received architectural commissions from the US Embassy, Reuters, the British High Commission and British Club.

Club Street Corner, Middle Road, Tan Quee Lan Street (oils on paper); British High Commissioner’s Official Residence (early watercolour).

In 2006 I returned to the UK, setting-up a studio/gallery in Bath. My oil portrait ‘The butterfly house’ was in the final of the Holburne Portrait Prize 2010 and went on to win the national Artist Magazine Editor’s Choice Award §in 2013, selling at The Society of Women Artists’ 2013 Annual Exhibition.

My watercolour portrait ‘Robbie’ was selected to hang in the Mall Galleries with the Royal Watercolour Society in 2011 and in Bankside Gallery with the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours in 2012. By carefully controlling the way light falls on my portrait sitters, I enjoy creating dramatic but intimate portrait commissions for families and individuals alongside my landscape practice.

The subtle light of the atmospheric British weather has inspired many works. My 2010 exhibition ‘Atmospherics’ explored the mysterious subjects of mist, rays of sunlight and glittering reflected light.

Illumination (detail) – gravity painted watercolour on artboard.

My next step was to start using rigid surfaces. Artboard helps me to faithfully record the mingling of my cascading pigments within water as they react together naturally to create delicate veils of colour and colliding effects. My ‘gravity painted’ landscapes sell at my solo exhibitions, as well as with the Bath Society of Artists and at First-View Gallery in Wiltshire.
You can find out all about my exhibitions here.

A ‘dramatic skies’ workshop for Cornwall School of Art.

I explain my techniques in my own intensive Bath Watercolour Workshops, visit art societies and I am a resident writer for The Artist Magazine. Contact me to sign up to my workshop news by email so that you never miss a date. I also teach at some wonderful art centres detailed here: art centres and holidays page. Here is a short introduction to my methods: