Catherine Farish

Catherine Farish was born in 1951 in London, England. Her father was British-Canadian, her mother Italian, and her family resettled in Montreal, Canada, during the mid-1950s. She received a diploma in Fine Arts from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts School in 1976 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts (cum laude) from Concordia University in 1983. A founding member of the Montreal print collective Atelier Circulaire, she studied with master printer François-Xavier Marange in 1986. Her early work was figurative and a print inspired by Leonard Cohen's poem "Gift" was awarded Grand Prize in a 1992 Loto-Quebec competition. In 1994 Farish's first abstract exhibition, Salisbury Plain at Galerie Simon Blais (Montreal), drew positive reviews in Voir, and Parcours Arts Visuels. Solo shows followed at Open Studio (Toronto), Galeriwan (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), Hope Corman Gallery (Victoria BC), Autre Équivoque (Ottawa ON), and at Cynthia Reeves' Spheris Gallery (Walpole NH). By 1997 Farish had replaced the central subject with multiple elements in the series Primo pensiero exhibited at Galerie Simon Blais. She also participated in the international group exhibitions: The Levee: Where the Blues Began shown in Canada, the United States, South Africa, Japan, and Korea; Veille at Bibliothèque nationale du Québec in Montreal, at the Boston Printmakers 50th Anniversary Exhibition, and at Galerie Echancrure in Brussels, Belgium.

Following an art residency at Asilah, Morocco, Farish adopted a North African palette of vermillion and orange. This new work was exhibited in 2001 as Dépaysment at Galerie Simon Blais, and the following year as Persimmon Prints at Spheris Gallery in New York City and Walpole, New Hampshire. In 2007 she exhibited with Louis-Pierre Bougie and François Vincent at Atelier Circulaire's 25th anniversary show where an interest in Asian calligraphy was noted. In 2009 she began to experiment with player piano rolls as surface and theme which led to the solo exhibitions Notes in 2011 and Blue in 2015 at Galerie Simon Blais. That year Farish's series of circular compositions Many Moons was exhibited at Cynthia-Reeves' New Hampshire gallery and at 2016 Pulse New York. In 2017 her Salisbury Plain series was exhibited at the UK Salisbury International Arts Festival. She was also selected by the UK multimedia project Cicatrix to represent Canada in the 2018 WW1 commemorative exhibition at the Swindon Art Gallery and Museum. In 2016 Farish lived and worked near Montreal, Quebec.