Catherine

Lawrence

I was born and raised in a small rural farm town in Granville County, 25 miles north of Raleigh, North Carolina. I was the first generation in my family to attend college at Appalachian State University, with majors in Theatre and Music and a minor in Dance. After College, I traveled the country with several theatre companies, then in my mid-20s moved to New York city where I remained for 30 years. My career has been eclectic with an MA in International Education at Columbia University, Teacher’s College, and a second MA from Hunter College, CUNY in Art History. My career in Art began in New York as an educator and cultural director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and as an adjunct professor in several universities. In 2007, I created InsideArtnyc, a cultural program that provided hundreds of art tours, lectures and special events in New York museums, galleries, and cultural sites. As an artist, I have studied drawing, acrylics, and watercolor in New York at the National Academy of Design, the West Side Y and in private Tribeca studios since 2001. I have also participated in over 25 art classes in the Town of Cary since 2020. Since returning to North Carolina in 2016, I have been teaching Art Appreciation at William Peace University which combines surveys of Art History with the fundamental elements of art, and with creative hands-on art projects. At Meredith College I taught advanced level courses in American Art History. I have also been a guest art lecturer in the Triangle for the following: Southern Impressions: Paintings from the James-Farmer Collection, NC Museum of History. The Best of North Carolina, Gallery C in Raleigh. Georgia O’Keeffe: Embracing the Sacred and the Sensual, NC Museum of Art. Rembrandt’s Life in Art-The Return of the Prodigal Son, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church. The Human in the Divine-Ancient to Contemporary, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church.

As a teacher and artist, I believe that Art reflects not only one’s personal thoughts, feelings and visions, but also the collective cultural experiences of our times. In my art making I am drawn to a sense of time and place, combining both the real with ethereal abstractions of nature and forgotten places. Rather than the exact, realistic details of a place, I seek to convey the atmospheric and sensory impressions of a subject. Watercolor is my favorite medium due to its seemingly accidental, unplanned nature. The colors and patterns of the medium itself often reveal more of a subject than my own imagination.

Acrylic, Colored Pencil, Mixed Media, Pastels/Oil Pastels, Watercolor/Gouache