Catriona Macdonald MacEachen is a Scottish landscape painter based in Fife.
Art has been her passion for as long as she can remember. A mainly self-taught artist, she specialised in Art while undertaking an Education degree in Glasgow. While continuing to paint, she taught in schools for several years before becoming a full time artist in 2009.
She feels that the true freedom of expression experienced as a self-taught artist has allowed her to develop her own unique style which is a clear personal reflection of how she perceives the beauty of the world around her and her place in it.
Catriona was born and raised in the East of Scotland in Fife and loves to paint the stunning Fife coastline that she knows so well. She can often be found there either sketching the gentle waves of the incoming tide on Elie Beach, or capturing the morning sun from West Sands as it rises over St Andrews. Catriona works both from her home in Kirkcaldy and her studio outside St Andrews. This studio is within close proximity to the beautiful beaches of West and East Sands and also to Elie and the picturesque fishing villages of St Monans, Pittenweem and Anstruther. This makes it a perfect base for Catriona.
Catriona’s roots, however, lie in the North West of Scotland in the Hebrides.
As a child, many family holidays were spent there, particularly South Uist from where Catriona's family originates. Her earliest memories are of long summer days playing on the croft and the beautiful white sandy beaches, watching the huge Atlantic breakers roll in and crash on the shore. She loved to explore the machair with its rich diversity of flora and fauna that runs alongside the sand dunes, and would happily spend hours creating pictures of what she found there.
Her fascinating Gaelic ancestry links her directly to Neil MacEachen who sailed with Bonnie Prince Charlie "over the sea to Skye" and on to France with him after the '45, and also to his kinswoman Flora Macdonald. She has a strong affinity, therefore, with the North West, Skye and the Isles and finds the natural beauty of the landscape there truly inspirational. Her love of the Highlands of Scotland means she makes regular trips there and they greatly influence her work.
