Catherine Long

Catherine Long’s background as a dance artist informs her painting practice. By working with professional dancers and musicians, she aims to explore further the relationship between dancing and painting. Long examines the expressive possibilities of colour and painterly gesture, filling her compositions with fields of tones bound by sinuous lines – an abstract and evocative analogy to the movements of a dancer’s body. Her paintings often take as a subject loose sensations and impressions, indicated by colours and the robustness or delicacy of her paint application. The artist further involves her viewers in her emotional state by often painting on a large scale, enveloping the viewer in their theatrical, visceral qualities. 

Long (b. 1982) studied Dance at De Montfort University, where she obtained an MA in 2010. In 2017, she obtained her PhD in Fine Art from the Chelsea School of Arts, and in 2024 completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art. Long has been the recipient of numerous artist residencies including in the United Kingdom and Portugal, and she was recently awarded a grant from the Arts Council England.  In 2025, she exhibited a series of three large-scale paintings at Lucent W1, London in conjunction with Wilder Gallery. Long has featured in group exhibitions across Europe and Canada. In 2025, she participated in the group shows LBF@TheLake II, held at LBF Contemporary in Muskoka, and Sight Lines at Hurst Contemporary in London. Long lives and works in London.

Image credit: brave Projects, Sarah Larby