Catherine Prescott grew up in Wisconsin. She twice exhibited in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, National Portrait Gallery. In 2018 she was commissioned to paint Governor Tom Corbett’s official portrait. In 2017 Principle Gallery invited nine artists to exhibit portraits of “The Charleston Nine” for their families. Catherine painted Reverend Pinckney.

Prizes awarded include the Portrait Society of America, the State Museum of Pennsylvania, The Salmagundi Club and ten firsts in juried exhibits. Museum shows include the Butler Institute of American Art, an invitational, the Brauer Museum of Art, two-person, the Susquehanna Museum of Art, solo, and the Phillips Museum of Art, solo. Her work was published in Art Renewal Center 14^th Annual International Salon, 2020, The Huffington Post, Image Journal, CIVA Seen, American Arts Quarterly, Art of The Portrait, and American Art Collector.

She taught at Messiah College, 20 years, and Gordon College’s Orvieto, Italy, program since 1998. Selected collections: Pennsylvania State Capitol, State Museum of Pennsylvania, Messiah College, Fulton Bank

I like to paint people whose looks seem to reveal the history of an inner life. My work is to discern which of the exterior visual clues convince me that I’m looking at a whole person…that the inside and the outside belong to each other.

Many of my models are friends I know whom I ask to pose for me. Often they have a story that stimulates my interest in them as well as a strong sense of interiority. I also paint commissioned portraits, which require getting to know the subjects as much as they have time for. I usually spend the first session just discussing what they want, but during that time I am watching carefully for the visual clues that will communicate their character and inner life. That is as important to me as an accurate and identifiable likeness. Then I take photographs, usually around 100, including several poses, and different light. Backgrounds or other supporting elements could be from other places or times, borrowed or invented.