Cathleen Windham is a CAE member and shows her work at CAE’s partner gallery, CMAG, in Georgetown. Her work encompasses several mediums including oils, gouache, paper collage, leather and textiles. Cathleen’s oil paintings are characterized by the use of every day scenes and settings in an atmosphere where recognition plays an important role. By addressing daily life as subject matter, every day objects undergo transubstantiation. You can learn more about her work at www.windhamstudio.net.

1. Tell us a little about your work and artistic practice?

   I mostly work in oils but also started doing small works in gouache last summer. They’re so great for capturing scenes quickly and problem solving. I do a lot of work outdoors, in plein air but also have a studio where I do larger work or the occasional still life. 

2. What have you been doing to keep occupied during the pandemic and how has your creative process been impacted?

   I have joked that I’ve been “in training” for quarantine for a few years. I work alone often so that hasn’t really been impacted. I do paint some with another artist when I work outdoors, Tanner Steed. We’re always mindful of keeping proper distance and wear masks as necessary. Frankly I feel fortunate to be a painter right now. Sales are slow but I’m able to work!

3. Where do you find inspiration?

   Oh my, lots of places and I never know when it’s going to surface. It can be something completely ordinary, like a road-side tire shop with the afternoon sun beaming through just right, the first seasonal snow in the mountains, or how geraniums glow in the window of laundry room. Other artists inspire me too, both living and those no longer with us. I love to study their work and how they achieved a certain mood or transpired an ordinary scene into something intriguing.

4. Do you have a favorite piece of art that someone else created? Tell us about one of your pieces that you have been the most proud of?

   I’ve been fortunate to collect paintings from many of my favorite artists. Two come to mind immediately, the first being Dawn Whitelaw. They are important because the work is astounding and Dawn had a huge influence as I began my practice. The other is a city scene of the Castro Theater in San Francisco by Anne Blair Brown. I cried the day I picked it up, I’d wanted that painting a long time.

   As for my own work of which I’m most proud, perhaps “Fix-A-Flat” and “Morning Cuppa’” (both pictured below). These were both pieces where creative barriers came down and “magic” happened on the canvas.

5. Who are your biggest influences?

   I started painting in about 2005 in Nashville in a 2-day workshop with Dawn Whitelaw. Definitely a game changer. From there, I was fortunate to cut my teeth as a plein air painter with some of the strongest artists in the southeast including Kevin Menck, Roger Dale Brown, and several others.

The Beets, oil, 12″x9″

Fix-A-Flat, oil, 12″x9″

Morning Cuppa, oil, 8″x16″

Wash & Fold, oil, 16″x20″