About the Artist
Catherine Ezell has been drawing and painting commissioned and non-commissioned portraits and exhibiting in local galleries for twenty years. She is devoted to a humanist vision and a painterly, bravura style, that celebrates a compassionate understanding of the human condition. Her art relates to European and American traditions in realism, but updates that legacy with perceptions of the contemporary experience. Her interest in humanism extends to the love of American and English Literature, in which she earned an advanced degree. It was this interest that inspired her series of monochrome portrait drawings of writers which she exhibits at library galleries and literary conferences. Drawing and use of color are her technical strengths. Working directly from life is her passion.
The galleries of The Copley Society, The Cambridge Art Association, and The Concord Art Association have represented her work regularly in their distinguished juried shows and portrait registries. She studied figure and portrait extensively under artists from The Art Students League of New York (most notably, Everett Raymond Kinstler), the Boston Fenway Studios and the R.H. Ives Gammell School (most notably, Robert Cormier.) Painting and drawing portrait and figure naturally, she prefers to paint directly from life, but uses photos for reference when necessary. Private collectors nationally and internationally own her works. She has taught portrait painting and drawing at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, Arlington Center for the Arts, Lexington Munroe Center for the Arts. Her specialization is Alla Prima Portrait Painting or direct painting from life which she demonstrates regularly for Art Centers and Associations.
