PROCESS | Catherine Clayton-Smith

Melbourne-based painter Catherine Clayton-Smith reflects on transformation, touch, and renewal in her Collingwood studio whilst preparing for her forthcoming solo exhibition with Olsen Gallery, Sydney.

Catherine Clayton-Smith. Photographed by Bowen Aricò.

I recently left my home-studio on the Vaucluse clifftops in Sydney, with the whale and ocean views, and have set up a new studio in Collingwood, Melbourne. At the time of writing, I am deep in preparation for my solo exhibition with Olsen Gallery, in February 2026. Just like moving cities, beginning a new series of work often feels like standing at the edge of something vast and unknown.

In the studio I never feel as though I am simply beginning a painting but instead entering into an ongoing conversation. It is both terrifying and exhilarating, full of the possibility of failure or breakthrough. I trust that I will make something compelling and have the courage to push through the small heartbreaks that come when I must paint over moments of beauty to serve the work as a whole.

I am always working on multiple paintings simultaneously, newly stretched canvases alongside works I have been constructing for years. It is not up to me when a painting is finished; sometimes it may come together in a day, sometimes over many years. My responsibility is to remain open to the journey and to recognise when the work has reached a point of resolve.

Censor, 2016, acrylic paint, canvas, 112 x 122 cm. Photographed by Robin Hearfield.

My large canvases require my whole body to be actively moving. My arms swing in sweeping thrusts, gestures that carry physical energy. At other times, I am crouched over, whispering to the surface with small marks, fine glazes, and delicate erasures. This oscillation between boldness and restraint reflects how I experience life itself: moments of rupture and euphoria balanced by acts of quiet repair.

In our era of image saturation, we are subjected to an endless stream of advertising, social media, and news (both real and fake). I let everything in, from the seemingly dull and disposable to the grand and transcendent. Painting allows me to hold this visual overload and transform it into something physical, a handmade object, able to contain it all at once. Source material serves as an anchor to tether my focus while I approach the image and reinvestigate it, searching for a colour, a line, or a compositional rhythm that can be transformed into this poetic space.

I work with acrylic because it allows me to move quickly, take risks, and respond to what emerges in the moment. Its fast-drying nature makes erasure and rebuilding possible. I often begin by laying down generous layers of colour, only to sweep them back, dry-brush across them, or glaze over them until what remains is a trace, an echo of earlier decisions. The process of erasure is crucial. To remove is to generate space for renewal. Painted passages are rubbed back, overlaid, or dissolved into translucency. In this sense, erasure is a form of mark-making itself, a gesture of absence that makes presence more acute. Each canvas becomes a palimpsest, carrying forward the process of its own making.

Painting is physical; it is movement, pressure, and sensual touch. The erotic nature within my work is not there as spectacle but as a way of connecting to the primal and visceral. I hope that viewers can step into the work and sense not only the imagery on the surface but also the history embedded within the sacrifice of earlier marks, the resilience of forms that insist on returning.

Theyes Rap Roun, 2022, acrylic paint, canvas, 132 x 132 cm. Photographed by Simon Hewson.

As with my source material, the titles of my works emerge from collected experiences. Snippets from spam emails, overheard words from passersby, discarded lists, or beautifully misspelled messages: one of which contributed to my title Theyes Rap Roun, 2022. The process of making unto itself is a source of reference, as with the title Potent Crumbs, 2024, which refers to the vast gathered imagery, like crumbs or clues that make up a work.

Potent Crumbs, 2024, acrylic paint, canvas, 152 x 168 cm. Photographed by Mark Pokorny.

My practice is akin to the openness of drawing, provisional, responsive. Transparency coexists with dense passages; spare, haiku-like paintings contrast with heavily worked surfaces that carry years of mark-making. I paint to explore instability, to honour flux, and to create a space where viewers can feel time, touch and memory, those layered sensations slipping between the visible and the invisible. Painting, ultimately, is not about reaching a conclusion but about witnessing transformation, embracing uncertainty, and finding poetry in the act itself.

EXHIBITION
Olsen Gallery: Solo Exhibition
4–28 February, 2026
Olsen Gallery, Woollahra, Sydney

Images courtesy of Catherine Clayton-Smith and Olsen Gallery

This article was first published in Artist Profile Issue 73