paintings
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Ten years ago I left San Francisco on a forty foot sailboat. We sailed to Mexico, then to Tahiti, Tonga and New Zealand. I traveled for a year on land which was long enough to forget details, like storms at sea. Then I crewed on a sixty foot boat to Fiji and eventually flew to American Samoa. When I tried to buy second hand clothes and found out there was no thrift store on the island, I started one.
Five years later I became involved with a Samoan fire knife dancer and after a hurricane devastated the island I helped to rebuild his parent's home. I'm writing a book about my sailing experience and time in American Samoa.
In 2005 I moved to Hawaii and painted full time for a few years. Unsure about where I wanted to live next, I traveled in the U.S. by train, boat and plane before finally buying a car. I drove from San Franciso to Miami visiting friends along the way and am currently in Saint Augustine working on ten paintings for an upcoming show in Los Angeles about the South Pacific. Life is never dull.
My paintings are a process of trial and error. The first strokes on a blank canvas take a little courage. The rest require enough patience to fix mistakes until something looks right. I often work from photographs that I take while traveling. Abstract paintings are more direct, compared to realism. I usually paint with acrylics, but also create oil paintings, watercolors and recently experimented with dye on plywood. Searching for inspiration and experimenting with new techniques is half the fun. Finishing something and getting it out in the world is the other half.
Five years later I became involved with a Samoan fire knife dancer and after a hurricane devastated the island I helped to rebuild his parent's home. I'm writing a book about my sailing experience and time in American Samoa.
In 2005 I moved to Hawaii and painted full time for a few years. Unsure about where I wanted to live next, I traveled in the U.S. by train, boat and plane before finally buying a car. I drove from San Franciso to Miami visiting friends along the way and am currently in Saint Augustine working on ten paintings for an upcoming show in Los Angeles about the South Pacific. Life is never dull.
My paintings are a process of trial and error. The first strokes on a blank canvas take a little courage. The rest require enough patience to fix mistakes until something looks right. I often work from photographs that I take while traveling. Abstract paintings are more direct, compared to realism. I usually paint with acrylics, but also create oil paintings, watercolors and recently experimented with dye on plywood. Searching for inspiration and experimenting with new techniques is half the fun. Finishing something and getting it out in the world is the other half.
BIO
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catherine buchanan © 2008 all rights reserved
and a few photogrpahs
