It is not often that I get an opportunity to attend an opening of an exhibition of paintings by a single artist, so I was quite excited to be visiting The Barefoot Gallery in Boston Spa for the opening of an exhibition of paintings, prints and other artworks by Catherine Rayner.
Catherine Rayner is an award-winning author, illustrator and artist, who has over a 14-year career written and illustrated 25 books that the exhibition brochure says are for children of all ages.
Catherine is also a local girl, she grew up in Harrogate and then went to art school in Edinburgh where she now lives with her husband and two sons. It is that local connection which brings the largest collection of new paintings and prints that Catherine has ever brought together for a solo show.
The collection features paintings of hares, pheasants, red squirrels, and hedgehogs, animals of the British countryside. These are not anatomically correct images that mimic what a photograph might recreate. Neither are they cartoons. They are somewhere in between. Most of the paintings are devoid of context or background the focus is all on the subject which are totally recognisable as animals. There is a high level of details in each work, you can almost stroke the fur. But there is also something in each painting that gives these animals genuine personality.
At this point I should explain that I switch off nature documentaries on TV if the presenters give the animals names and start to talk melodramatically in an attempt to create drama. I am not one for cute pictures of animals.
This is quite an admission for me, because I now also have to admit that the expressions that Catherine gives her subjects are totally believable. I don’t expect animals to spend their life with a fixed countenance, I know that they are capable of expressing feelings through using their facial muscles, I have had enough dogs to know that, but it is still a bit of a shock when looking at these paintings, the expressions of the animals have me starting to wonder what they are thinking as they look out of the canvas at me.
I suspect that it is Catherine’s skill as an illustrator that truly allows her to give her subjects genuine characters that have me wondering what they were doing at the time the brush met canvas and what their back stories are.
The exhibition runs until 5th July 2017 at the Barefoot Gallery in Boston Spa