Z is for Zinnias by Cathy Ross

Cathy Ross Biography

Cathy Ross was born in Saint John, New Brunswick Canada. She studied at Mount Allison University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1983 she was awarded a scholarship to study at the Banff School of Fine Arts. In both 1981 and 1983 Cathy was the recipient of Elizabeth T. Greenshields Foundation grants.

In her professional career she has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the US. Her work is represented in collections across Canada, including: Memorial University, NFLD; New Brunswick Museum, Saint John NB; The Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; Banff Centre, Alberta; Dofasco Inc., Hamilton; and the Burnaby Art Centre, Burnaby BC. 

Cathy lives and works in Waterloo, Ontario and Saint Andrews, New Brunswick.

Artist Statement: "Z is for Zinnias"

The alphabet is one of the first things we learn. Twenty-six letters become the building blocks for everything we will eventually read, write, remember and imagine. For this exhibition, I have used the alphabet as a different kind of starting point: one painting for each letter, from A to Z.

There are no letters in these paintings. Instead, each letter is represented by an object, a flower, a treasured possession, something from a place I love, or an object carrying a particular memory. Some are immediately recognizable; others may take a moment to reveal their place in the alphabet.

My choice of subjects is one of the most important elements in my work. Red Shoes holds the memory of my mother and later my daughter both arriving in Canada wearing red shoes and starting a new life. A pair of worn moccasins and embroidered slippers can hold the memory of who made them and the occasion for which they were worn. Flowers can evoke a season, a garden, or a particular summer. An apparently ordinary object can become extraordinary when it is connected to a person, a place or a moment.

Watercolour suits this exploration because of its intimacy and its ability to work in great detail. I work in the realist tradition, looking closely at the shape, surface, colour and small imperfections of each subject. But the purpose of that close observation is not simply to reproduce what I see, but to delight in the intrinsic beauty of my subjects. The paintings are therefore both portraits and still lifes. They are portraits of things, but also of the people, places and memories that surround them.

The alphabet provided me with a playful constraint: twenty-six letters, twenty-six paintings, twenty-six opportunities to look at something familiar in a new way. Beginning with A and ending with Z.