Hillsborough Gallery of Arts begins the new year welcoming new member CATHARINE CARTER, Mixed Media artist. Catharine earned a BFA in Studio Art and went on to establish a successful portrait photography studio where she photographed families and events for 35 years. In 2010, Catharine closed the portrait studio to fully embark on her own journey of artistic expression and self-discovery. For years she had been experimenting with double exposures in my darkroom and discovered that her thoughts and feelings were much better illustrated by combining images than they could be through a single image.
Read Catharine’s account of her journey into art:
Stories in the form of fables, myths and fairy tales have always held a fascination for me and helped me find perspective on my own deepest thoughts and emotions. The writings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, combined with my love of stories, inspired me to delve deeper into my unconscious, explore my internal world and translate those thoughts into photomontage images. Growing up in an artistic family, I was introduced at a young age to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Aesop’s Fables, and Greek mythology. My father was a performer and he read the stories with such great expression that he made them come to life for me.
I also reconnected with Joseph Campbell’s writings and his hero’s journey (through the Bill Moyer tapes), which led me to Carl Jung. Their thoughts on self-actualization and the unconscious expanded my viewpoint and led me to examine my own inner landscape through archetypes, mythology, fairy tales, and collective memories.
My works of Photomontage are published in JOURNEY, a book of photo-montage imagery that is interspersed with short writing from Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung which inspired my works shown in the book. The book is available on my website (LINK). It will also be available at Hillsborough Gallery.