Cattrall, Linda

Linda Cattrall

Painter

BA(FineArt)Hons. Liverpool College of Art, 1979. PGCE.   Scraptoft Campus, Leicester 1981

Placing all the work I had done in the quiet corners of my life in a portfolio I went along for interview in Hope Street for the Art Foundation Course.  As the tutor unzipped my folder and began to look through my work it felt to me like my very soul was being unzipped and scrutinised!  I held my breath, ready to run for it,  when I heard him say, “well you know you will be the best painter on this course don’t you”!!!  I worked with Sam Walsh for a year, often just the two of us in the studio because the rest of the students were in the pub.  

The work in that portfolio was all about what was around me in my environment, objects, stuff, whatever was outside of me, frozen forever in colour and in two dimensions.  At Art College I explored the world of 3D through pottery, finding in that wonderful, primordial material,  a connection to my ancestors.  I wanted to explore the very routes of human-ness.  I contacted my inner world, my intuition (inner tutor).  I would go into the library and closing my eyes, run my hand along the books until I got a feeling – every time I did this, a fabulous work proffered itself to me.  In this way, I discovered, Margaret Mead, Margaret Murray, Merlin Stone, Anais Nin, Germain Greer.  I read Castaneda, Jung, books on mythology past and present.  I compared religious beliefs, fairy tales, myth and political systems.  I began to get an overview of the human condition.  I was influenced by any an all of the unconventional, for example, Duchamp, Boyes, Escher, Dali.

In many ways, I am still coming to terms with the trauma of my teenage years and on top of that, the subsequent accumulation of various traumas, the result of surviving in the world!!  My work is on-going along with my thirst for understanding.