Catherine Harvey Jefferson's paintings, taken from studies and made in extraordinary and remote places, embody her deep connection with the landscape as well as a synesthetic use of colour.
Jefferson works from a painting studio on the North Cornish coast, with a distant view of the Isles of Scilly. She is a sailor, and much of her work stems from her lifetime of being at sea aboard her own boat, Verity, in Cornwall, or sailing with family and friends all over the globe.
Jefferson is constantly drawing, making colour notes in watercolour and oil bar as part of the process of absorbing a place, a feeling, a memory, aiding the recall when the paintings are formed and formalized in the studio. Her work gives just enough visual connection to place to pull viewers into her world of dynamic, abstract, delicious colour, allowing space for viewers to embark on their own journey within the painting.
Jefferson is a third generation painter, and the second generation to be trained at Falmouth School of Art. From there, she completed a degree in Fine Art Painting at Winchester School of Art. Jefferson’s travels have taken her into the Arctic Circle, and south to the mountains in Patagonia, tramping in New Zealand up to the snowline of Mount Cook, and going face to face with glacial melt water. There is an intensity and urgency in her love letters to nature. Recent work explores sailing on Scotland’s West coast with the crew from Eda Frandsen, where she taught landscape painting on board. More recently, she's detailed an adventure out to Cape Clear Island across Roaring Water Bay of her beloved Ireland.
Today, her work is in collections around the world.