Catherine Morris is a contemporary Colourist whose work is informed by rural landscapes, from the dramatic beauty of the Yorkshire Moors to other unique places around the British Isles. Her mixed media works explore elevated viewpoints and emphatic angles, capturing a sense of scale and colour that celebrates the inherent power of the land.

In her twenties, Catherine took various journeys by hot air balloon, and she has recently undertaken light aircraft flights across the Nazca Lines in Peru and over the West Coast of Australia, exploring the patterns of manmade geoglyphs, ancient settlements, and the shapes made by farming and tillage of the earth. These experiences are evident in the form and focus of her practice, which responds to the topographical details and traces of archaeology that are revealed by aerial perspectives. She also draws inspiration from the work of Welsh photographer David Abrams, painter David Tress, and Royal Academician Barbara Rae, whose use of “colour and shape, mark making, and ability to capture the mood of the landscape in wonderfully expressive and abstracted ways” has been influential to her practice.  

Drawing on her own visual diaries, Catherine works primarily on board with paint, print and translucent papers, building shape and texture by intuition, and letting the composition emerge through a process of placing and layering that enriches colour and strengthens form. In this way, plateaus, ridgelines, hills and distant horizon lines are merged with vivid atmospheres of light and colour, bringing earth, rock and air together in a deeply sensory, subtly abstracted way.

Catherine is a member of Leeds Fine Artists, the Yorkshire Colourists and Redbrick Artists, and is a graduate of Cornwall’s Newlyn School of Art’s 2024/25 Professional Landscape Programme. Her recent collections have been exhibited in Yorkshire, Cheshire, Leicestershire and West Cornwall.