Catherine Scala
As a process painter, I don’t use color as ornament -- I use it as force, as structure, as the senses made visible. My work doesn’t begin with a fixed image or a predetermined destination; it unfolds through a physical dialogue with the materials, with paint itself. Painting (and collage) becomes a way of navigating the space between chaos and order — a slow sorting of the visual noise that surrounds us.
The first layers are instinctive, unplanned. They set off a chain of responses, one gesture leading to the next, and eventually a certain kind of clarity begins to emerge.
There is tension in that unfolding. A push and pull between boldness and restraint, between fear and intention. Each piece becomes a record of that negotiation. The image asserts itself through layering of materials, through shifts in shape and color. I am searching for ways to distill the chaos into something essential — blocks of color, elemental forms, texture, and physical substance. Not to tidy up the world, but to give it form. To find balance in the extremes.
BIOGRAPHY
Catherine Scala is an abstract painter with an MFA in Visual Arts from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University where she was nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in Painting. Scala has shown her work in a variety of exhibitions and juried national competitions. She received a purchase award from the 20th National Drawing and Print Competitive Exhibition from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, was nominated for Portsmouth, NH’s Seacoast Spotlight on the Arts Award in Drawing, and was a finalist for the Piscataqua Region Artist Advancement Grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Scala was invited to be one of three painters featured at the William Scott Gallery’s painting exhibition in Boston’s SOWA art district and has exhibited with The Good Question Gallery in New York, the Foundation Center, Exeter NH, and New Arts Center, Newton MA. She teaches online courses in media studies for Sacred Heart University in CT and has taught painting and professional development at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, NH. She currently lives in Portland, ME.
