Water in Motion

Catherine Moreno of Golden Gate-Marin Branch, California, is fascinated by abstraction, three-dimensionality, motion, luminescence, color, shadows and reflection. Water in motion or in any state is her favorite subject.

“I am drawn to closeup details of nature and paint realistic scenes more often than abstracts,” she says.

Moreno was born in Oregon and spent her early years playing on Oregon coast beaches, but has lived most of her life in Sausalito and Mill Valley, California. She began painting in the early 1990s and is largely self-taught, learning from artist colleagues and in art classes and workshops in the San Francisco Bay area.

Oil is her main medium, but she also occasionally uses acrylic. She works on compositions outside and at home, sometimes using photographs as a beginning reference.

“I like to work slowly until I surprise myself and am satisfied that the details of the painting are mind-catching,” she says. “In the end, I may arrive at something of the effect I originally intended, or, less often, spectacularly achieve the goal toward which I originally set out.”