Local artist Catherine Cavallo speaks to ARTZ ID about her painting practice, how the COVID-19 lockdown provided much-needed serenity, and her upcoming exhibition titled ‘Serenity and Upheaval’.
I was trained as a figurative painter with oils as my chosen medium. I’m primarily a studio painter, although I enjoy ‘plein air’ as a reminder of how to be fast and free. Oil painting requires preparation and patience. I often stretch my own canvases with unprimed canvas which I then coat with cooked-up rabbit skin glue. This enables me to still enjoy the actual canvas without thick white primer. I stain the canvas, mix up a purplish colour and draw in the subject matter pretty fully, creating a monochrome first stage. After that it’s a gradual build up of the painting as l apply layer after layer of paint. I love the creamy, easily manipulated quality of oil paint, but it requires control and planning, as oil paint will always take over to some extent. It sometimes feels like a real battle to stay in control! I like my paintings to present a challenge, a lot of the fun (and frustration) comes in always climbing over problems and figuring things out.
I’ll be hanging mostly works done in the last 3 years. These will include figurative imaginative works, usually depicting scenes that have some meaning to me in some way or other. Some depict more sombre subject matters, while others are lighthearted. But I try to bring all of them alive with energy and emotion. The sea also draws me in as it’s got life and fury bigger than any human I know, so there’ll be a number of paintings portraying the sea in its different moods. A lot of the sea and landscapes on exhibit were done ‘en plein air’ and so are relevant to my whole procedure.
The exhibition is titled ‘Serenity & Upheaval’. I arrived at this idea by examining what it was that I was trying to say with my work. The COVID-19 lockdown put me in a very serene and pensive mood, and I welcomed the much-needed pocket of serenity provided amidst a world in turmoil. The exhibition is about the pockets of serenity we search for in a world rife with upheaval.
I’ve got a lot of nude studies which I’m looking forward to attacking with mixed medium. Let’s see what I can get out of them. They’re mostly of my favourite model Charlene, with her imaginative and expressive poses, which are crying out to be turned into something. My mind is also traveling down a path I’ve been straining to see more clearly for a while. Here’s to clarity and expression in 2021🥂
Connect with Catherine Cavallo and follow her work on ARTZ ID. Click here to learn more about her upcoming exhibition ‘Serenity and Upheaval’ taking place at the Malta Society of Arts between December 3 to 23, 2020.
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