Paintings of Presence, Memory and Atmosphere
Catherine Corfield is a UK-based contemporary figurative painter whose work explores stillness, memory and emotional presence.
Working primarily from observation, she paints quiet, intimate moments drawn from everyday life, often depicting figures within domestic interiors and natural spaces. Her practice is rooted in close looking, where subtle gestures, shifting light, colour and atmosphere carry emotional weight.
Corfield’s paintings focus on what is often overlooked: the in-between moments that shape experience but resist clear narration. Through a restrained and painterly approach, her work invites slower engagement, where meaning unfolds gradually through atmosphere, ambiguity and the quiet pressure of human presence.
She is based in the UK.
Artist Statement
My work is concerned with how we experience time - not as something fixed, but as something felt through presence, memory, and attention.
I paint from observation, often focusing on quiet, everyday moments that might otherwise pass unnoticed. These are not staged scenes, but fragments of lived experience, where gesture, light, and atmosphere carry emotional significance.
Figures appear both connected and separate, held within spaces that suggest intimacy, distance, and the passage of time. Interiors and landscapes become settings for reflection, where meaning is not explicit, but gradually revealed.
Painting allows me to hold these moments - to slow them down, and to consider what remains.
