Catherine Haines
In The Dark, 3 Flashes Then a Pause
17 May to 14 June 2024
Opening: Friday 17 May 5 - 8pm
There’s a sea so deep and wide
It speaks from every side
So all the sailors hear.
- When Winter Comes Around by The Lemon Twigs
School Gallery is pleased to present In the Dark, 3 Flashes Then a Pause, an exhibition of new lighthouse paintings by Catherine Haines. Haines fascination with lighthouses started when she found a collection of postcards of Cornish lighthouses in a boot sale. She stated: “...it was all the wrong way around. I found the collection of postcards before I set about visiting each destination. The collection of postcards of lighthouses, unsent, no messages, unstamped was the beginning of my journey around all the lighthouses off the Cornish coast. I walked, sailed and swam around them. Watched and waited until it got dark to see them switch on, each with their own unique light and rhythm.”
Haines’ obsession with lighthouses has now taken her all over the UK. For this exhibition Haines’ has focused on lighthouses at night, the moment when the dormant structures come to life and enlighten the shoreline in their own unique manner. The title of the exhibition alludes to this moment, the 3 simultaneous flashes followed by a timed pause, unique to each individual lighthouse, making the oceans many residents aware of its presence and their position in relation to it.
In the Dark, 3 Flashes Then a Pause presents new larger scale paintings, still filled with romantic notions of melancholy, offering a herculean account of the grand relics that once single handedly worked to protect the oceans shorelines. Haines’ paintings are more recognisable as portraits capturing the essence and beauty of these monumental structures rather than their mere function or coastal surroundings.
Catherine Haines was born in Cornwall in 1979. At 18 she studied for one year at Falmouth School of Art, from there she went onto study fashion at Central St Martins in London. She cut her teeth in the fashion industry working for designers: Copperwheat Blundell, Magnus Magnussen, and Myoung-Hee Zo in London, Milan, Copenhagen and Seoul. Her love of drawing led her to textile design, and she decided to move her studio back to Cornwall. During this phase, she wanted to learn more drawing techniques and learnt how to make etchings under the tuition of John Howard, Master Printmaker in Falmouth. From 2007-2009 she returned to London to complete an MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art. She won the Villier David Prize in 2007 and travelled to Mexico City to meet Artist and Printmaker Agustin Gonzalez. A year later she returned once again to live and work in Cornwall. Now predominantly a painter and printmaker, she has exhibited at Tate St Ives, Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall; Borlase Smart Space, PayneShurvell, Suffolk and London, Invisible Print Studio, London. She lives and works in Newlyn, Penzance.