Katherine Tyrrell

Katherine Tyrrell loves drawing and painting landscape and still life subjects in both pastels and coloured pencils. She has a particular interest in working from life and the impact of light on both colour and form. Her art has attracted much praise for her use of colour and is included in private collections in the UK, Australia and the USA. She very much enjoys working "en plein air" and landscape paintings on her website were completed or initially developed in front of the subject. She now likes to treat still life subjects and macro perspectives of flowers 'as if' they are objects with an interior landscape. When working on more textured or abrasive supports using coloured pencil or pastel, she tends to work in the same 'painterly' way although her coloured pencil work on hot press paper can be more detailed.

Katherine showed early promise as an artist when she won a national painting competition age 6! She studied art to advanced level at school before stopping all artistic endeavours for 17 years to make time to pursue degrees, professional qualifications and 'career development'. In 1990, she resumed her art education on a part-time basis. She has studied drawing at two London Art Schools - Central St Martins College of Art and the Princes Drawing School and painting with a number of well known professional artists.

Travelling to draw and paint prompted her first use of coloured pencils in the early 90s. Initially she used them to develop preliminary sketches for paintings, but they are now a vital part of her travel kit for both sketches and more finished works completed away from the studio. Both her website and "Making a Mark", her weblog, provide an insight into her way of working from drawing to completed painting. Her website includes both sample drawings from her travel sketchbooks for various countries and the paintings that were developed subsequently. She uses her weblog to describe her approach in developing individual drawings and completed paintings both 'en plein air' and in the studio.

She has exhibited in group shows in the UK and USA.  These include annual exhibitions of national societies in central London galleries (the Mall Galleries, the Menier Gallery and Llewellyn Alexander Gallery).  Katherine is an Associate Member of the Society of Feline Artists (SOFA) and the Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA) and was elected to the Council of the SGFA in 2007.

Contact details:

E-Mail: pastelsandpencils[at]gmail.com
Website: www.pastelsandpencils.com
Weblog: www.makingamark.blogspot.com