Catherine Minnery

Catherine’s formal art education started at the University of Cincinnati where she was a design student with the vague idea of pursuing a degree in fashion design. Her first year drawing instructor convinced her that her talents lay more in the field of fine art. So in the middle of her second year of study, she left the university and started her studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She graduated with a fine arts certificate and later finished her academic degree at the University of Cincinnati evening college.

After graduation she obtained several positions in the field of advertising including working as an Art Director for a fashion shoe manufacturer.  Along the way she married a fellow art student who had changed his major to architecture and when he graduated, they moved to South Dakota, where he started his career. Two more moves followed; to Mississippi and eventually upstate New York, where she freelanced as a graphic designer and illustrator while being a mother to three children. Knowing that eventually she would “get back into my own work”. A week‘s landscape painting workshop, with painters David Rohn, Marjorie Portnow and Richard Sheehan, at The Vermont Studio Center, turned out to be a great place for her to reacquaint herself with her early passion. Once back home she painted or drew any time she could, working plein air and eventually painting dominated her creative pursuits. Soon her work was shown more and collectors bought.

As for the material she prefers, she works primarily in oil, but also enjoys working with  watercolor and charcoal. “My charcoal work consists of strong contrasts and shapes. My watercolor work is direct and loose....not tightly rendered. I know that the drawings and the watercolors instruct and inform my oil pieces.”