Catherine O' Donnell's Rome Residency

The British School at Rome

 

NADC Visual Arts teacher Catherine O'Donnell has just been awarded The British School at Rome Residency, one of the National Art Schools major awards for 2014. The British School in Rome (BSR) is leading humanities and fine arts research institution and one of the most prestigious research academies in Rome. For over 100 years world-class researchers of the art, history and culture of the western Mediterranean and the best contemporary artists in the Commonwealth have been nurtured at this institution.

This 2015 Visual arts residency will not only provide Catherine with the opportunity to research and focus on her work, but also to use her fully equipped live-in studio for three months as a base to explore Rome and Italy's rich visual culture of the past. 

Rome holds countless significant sites of reference and research for Catherine as her work for the past 10 years has focused on the use of linear perspective and geometry. Her time at the BSR will be spent studying the techniques and theories employed by the 16 & 17th Italian Masters in their powerful architectural illusions. The Italian artists of this time created illusions of soaring architecture and floating figures painted on a flat ceiling which belies the real bounds of the actual physical space. Their paintings were organised in accordance with a scientific vision, bringing the depicted space into contact with true space. They developed an advanced understanding of optics, mathematics, geometry and linear perspective and it is these classical traditions of western art that Catherine will be studying, in both the writings and artworks of key Baroque artists.

You can check out some of Catherine's work at her website http://catherineodonnell.com.au/ and read more about the British School at Rome here: http://www.bsr.ac.uk/
Congratulations Catherine!