Catherine MacDiarmid lives and works in her hometown of Kendal. She studied Visual Arts at De Montfort University in Leicester, graduating in 1994. She balances working as a part time Tutor in adult creative learning with her artistic development, both completing portrait commissions and her own thematic artwork.
Catherine has exhibited widely, including the BP Portrait Show, Sunday Times Watercolour competition, New Light Art, Society of Women Artists, Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, Artists and Illustrators in 2017, RBSA Prize and Portrait Prize Exhibition and the Pastel Society. Her work is in national and international collections, and she featured in Sky Portrait Artist of the year 2014, 2018 and 2019, getting into the semi finals in 2019. She was short listed in the Jacksons Open 2019.
Catherine belongs to a number of art collectives including the Lakes Artists Society and the CBPP.
Catherine derives her inspiration from the people around her - family members and friends. Current themes involve exploring the hidden disabilities of her three children and their struggles to find how they fit into the social world.
Catherine is an artist who reaches beneath the obvious. In doing so she creates more than just a painting. Whole other identities or personas are captured in her work.
“Faces are the most interesting things we see and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t paint people. I am fascinated by portraiture and how much it can disguise or reveal the inner person. The sitter can choose to reveal as much or as little as they want and I seek to capture something of the external self as well as the inner self. It is all really about a conversation between artist and subject. Capturing the character can sometimes be just a consequence of interaction and conversation that exudes once the painting is complete.”
Selected CV
2021
Behind the Locking Glass, Rheged, Cumbria
2020/21
Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
New Light Exhibition, National Tour
Pastel Society, Mall Galleries
RBSA Prize Exhibition
2019
Personal, solo exhibition, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, semi finalist
RBSA annual prize exhibition (honorary mention)
Jackson’s Open Painting Prize, shortlisted
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, Mall Galleries
Up Front Open, Penrith
2018
RBSA annual prize exhibition
Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year
Up Front Open, Penrith
2017
RBSA annual Portrait Prize exhibition
Patching Art Prize Exhibition
Artists & Illustrators Artist of the Year 2017 (prize winner), Mall Galleries
Up Front Open, Penrith
2016
RBSA annual prize exhibition (prize winner)
Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour, Mall Galleries
Cumbrian Artist of the Year, Reghed, Penrith
Up Front Open (prize winner), Penrith
2014
Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year
The Artists Eye, Brewhouse, Kendal
Open Up North, Kendal
2004-5
FACE2, Touring Exhibition, Warehouse Gallery, Kendal, Wrexham Arts Centre,The Roxy Art House, Edinburgh
2004
Preface, Sugar Store Gallery, Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
2003
Not The Turner Prize, The Mall Galleries, London
2002
Brewery Open (first prize), Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal
BP Portrait Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, Aberdeen City Art Gallery
2001
BP Portrait Exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, Millennium Galleries, Sheffield
