Catherine Daniels, Chicago Artist

“Broken”: Acrylic and Oil 18 inches by 36 inches

Catherine Daniels currently resides in Chicago, and paints at her studio at Fulton Street Collective, where she has been a member since 2018.

​If one expression could be used to describe Catherine’s artwork, it would be: “In the Moment.” Like a jazz pianist improvising a solo, Catherine uses subject matter, color and medium as a band would use chord progressions, rhythm and instruments, to form a structure, and then the rest is decided by the unique interactions leading to that one moment of creation. The mixture of what is happening in society, in politics, in the environment, or even the weather, all might influence what will end up on the canvas. When musicians in a band interact with each other in different venues, nothing is ever quite the same, even when the band plays the same song. Catherine explores the interaction of colors, tone and subject matter with that idea in mind when painting each new piece. The particular style is not the point. The commonality is that they are all influenced by the here and now.
Her pieces explore the flow of emotions we all experience by using different textures, color combinations, patterns and shapes, as a musician would personalize the rhythm, pace, and dynamics of a piece. The negative spaces are analogous to the silences in a song, and can create a more powerful statement than the sound or object itself. 
Sometimes the point is precision, sometimes it is bold emotion. But the work is really never the same.
Catherine studied music beginning at age five in Minnesota and competed and continued playing piano through college at the Conservatory of Lawrence University. Then in adulthood she started a jazz band through The Old Town School of Folk Music.
Music and sketching were always intertwined, although not always consciously. Her grandfather helped support his family as a watercolor artist and commercial illustrator in Chicago, and Catherine followed in his footsteps but gravitated from watercolor to oil to acrylic. She has studied art formally beginning in 1989 at The University of Chicago, and continuied at The Evanston Art Center and The NorthShore Art League. 
Prairie Capital in Chicago holds a permanent collection of Catherine’s paintings. Her work also hangs on the walls of Workbox Chicago, and The Fulton Street Collective as well as in private collections throughout the country. Catherine has collaborated with individuals on commissions that are very personal and unique and is open to working to create a unified vision for the buyer.

Please feel free to contact Catherine to discuss a commission. Limited edition prints are also available for sale through the daniels.design website.
And in the spirit of the jazz world, please see Catherine’s acrylic piece entitled “Kind of Blue”, inspired by Miles Davis.

​https://www.daniels.design/