Cathy Read
Buckingham
Contemporary artist Cathy Read draws with masking fluid, creating urban landscape paintings that reflect city life in all it's glory. Cathy Read re-imagines iconic architecture using explosive, colour
Buildings reflect the dreams of the people who create them. By adopting an abstract style, I capture that dreamlike quality. The masking fluid creates a linear structure which holds together the fluid and energetic paint and ink shapes. The ink, especially, allows mini explosions of colour which evolve during the drying process.
With these paintings I look for perspectives that convey the scale of the buildings. That sense of Awe at their sheer size. By experimenting with angles, foreshortening and shapes, I seek the essence of the vision behind their creation and that childhood sense of looming where the building feels like it will topple on you. I look for contrasts where they occur: such as new creations, with clean shapes and lines, alongside old decaying ones, or how, in older buildings, the geometry is softened by nature over time.
Mankind likes to make its mark, especially with public developments. People living and working in the spaces further modify the environment. The buildings are occupied and altered from subtle wear and tear to major remodelling.
I look at this architecture, see the shapes and use the photographic image to make out patterns of construction, flaws, wear and tear, Making features of the mundane and ordinary.
Once I've created a detailed drawing I cover it with masking fluid. This provides structure over which a free flowing painting is created. The painting represents the moving life within the building. Paint spills outside the edges in tendrils, like the energy of life spills out from the architecture itself.. Once the masking is removed, something new and exciting is revealed.
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