Artist of the Month, April 2025 – Catherine Creaney

Catherine Creaney is an award winning Northern Irish artist, working primarily in portraiture in the mediums of oil, pastel and pencil. A self-taught artist, Catherine’s process of development has taken her from working in abstraction in her early years to the realism she is best known for today. She purposefully chooses expressions in her portraits that can be open to interpretation and offer a glimpse into the internal mindset of the sitter. She also sometimes incorporates backgrounds that also offer the viewer a possible insight into the subject’s world. Catherine’s work has been exhibited internationally, and she has been commissioned to paint portraits of many important dignitaries, which sees her work featured in several significant public collections.

I See You In Feathers is part of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Art Collection. This was an oil painting created in honour of her mother who died of Multiple Sclerosis. The painting was an expression of the grief she felt after her death. Both Catherine and her family kept finding feathers in the period before and after her mother’s passing, and they became symbolic. The inspiration behind the painting was for Catherine to show herself surrounded by feathers, her way of honouring her mother’s memory and expressing her grief at her loss.

Further information about Catherine and her work can be found at www.catherinecreaney.com