Catherine Story is also included in the Tate's Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists. The Guardian's Nicholas Wroe and Simon Grant interviewed each artist for their article Why Painting Still Matters. Here's an excerpt from Catherine Story's interview..
As a child it seemed obvious to me that painting was the best way to communicate, as language was so difficult to understand. But when I was a teenager I discovered cinema and this distinction became less clear. Black and white films were on television all the time in the 80s and I used to spend all day alternating between painting and watching films. I graded each film with a star code and collected all the vintage posters and artwork I could find. I even wrote to Channel 4 asking for specific films, not expecting that the then boss, Jeremy Isaacs, would kindly reply saying that, yes, there were more Humphrey Bogart films coming up. So when I painted the camera in Lovelock (I) years later, in 2010, it was something of a eureka moment, but one for which I'd been subconsciously searching for a long time. The shape – it's one of Fellini's cameras – took me back to that time when I loved paintings and old films, and felt they were equal. And it had all these meanings that linked to film genres as well as wider themes: it's a portrait, a clown and a seducer, but there's also a key, a lock, a heart, a castle and a precipice. And while it's about looking, it's also blind, so that made me think about what a camera actually sees as well as more existential questions about the strangeness of looking at things. more
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Catherine Story, Lovelock (I) 2010 © Catherine Story Photo: Andy Keate. Courtesy Carl Freedman Gallery, London |
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Catherine Story, Big Foot (II) 2009 © Catherine Story Photo: Andy Keate. Courtesy Carl Freedman Gallery, London |
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| Catherine Story 'Once Upon a Time' (2010) Oil on wood 25 x 35 x 3 cm |