Upcoming Exhibitions

'The Moment is All We Have' (2025) presents a dance of texture and light in the paintings of Catherine Walters, on show October 7 – 10 at NMIT’s G_Space Gallery.

Walters offers a different way of seeing the places we know. Through her eyes, once-familiar landscapes are given a magical, luminous quality - the sense of “naïve naturalism” that defined the paintings of Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup. There is something surreal or childlike in the use of jewel tones, as though Walters’ scenes are filtered through the memory of a dream.

In contrast, texture is a grounding element. After moving to Aotearoa New Zealand, Walters became fascinated by the textures of our natural environment: our rocky crags, sharp blades of harakeke, and the distinctive “criss-cross” tangle of divaricating native shrubs. These too inform her practice. When paint alone cannot fully describe the textures that capture Walters’ imagination, she turns to acrylic mediums and pastes, playing with three-dimensionality to build tactile surfaces into her works.

Beyond landscape, Walters’ paintings share moments in time: those fleeting- a flash of white under swooping Piwakawaka’s wing, the twist of a leaf snared by the wind; and those enduring - the mirror-like shine of a braided river unspooling across glacial moraine or the tireless wax and wane of the seasons. In the quiet sanctuary of the exhibition space, these moments fill the senses, a temporary balm for the incessant noise of the everyday.