Catherine Harvey Jefferson is a third generation painter from the Harvey family in Cornwall. She studied at Falmouth and Winchester Schools of Art. Her childhood and formative years were spent sailing the Cornish, Breton and Irish coasts with her family and her links with the sea go back generations. Some of the most memorable journeys of her childhood were travelling out to the Isles of Scilly from Newlyn harbour and spying the granite castles and caves from off shore.

Moving back to Cornwall recently after living in the Home Counties for many years has led to several successive annual bodies of work derived from spending hours and hours working on drawings and paintings out on the sea cliffs.

Catherine is a regular exhibitor at The Great Atlantic Galleries and an enthusiastic participant in the Galleries’ travelling road-show programme. She often undertakes workshop sessions with students at host road-show venues, where her flair and energy inspires young artists.

“Each painting in my latest collection is a celebration of the landscape in West Cornwall and each, without exception, has been painted outside in all weathers.

“They are about pinning a canvas down and recording the elemental dynamic. They have been made over a series of visits to specific places and then taken back to the studio to be tamed.

"The work, I hope, gives an idea of the intense colour, light and energy which abounds in this part of the world (even when the sun isn’t shining!).”

It is often said that the peninsular counties of Devon and Cornwall have a “quality of light” that attracts, inspires and sustains a veritable colony of artists. The intensely bright and suffuse light, plus the myriad variations in the coastal and inland landscape of these counties is portrayed in charcoal, ink, watercolour, oil, gouache and all manner of media by a legion of landscape artists.