Cat Edinoff

Cat Edinoff is an observational artist, designer and illustrator, working primarily in paint. Her current series ‘Signs of Life’ consists of oil studies on wood panels. They zoom in on the micro stories and in-between moments happening quietly on any ordinary day, particularly where the natural and human world meet. 

Cat’s process begins with looking. She is constantly noticing and mentally collecting shapes, relationships and compositions from the world around her. Every so often, a particular arrangement catches her attention and sets off her curiosity, becoming a puzzle she fixates on. She’s driven to understand what she’s seeing by visually dismantling and reassembling its parts through the act of painting. 

Cat begins either by painting directly from life, outside, or in the studio from reference pictures she’s taken. She works directly onto the surface, as intuitively as possible, choosing what details the painting needs and building the story in layers. The paintings are small and intimate, reflecting the ordinary, often fleeting encounters that prompted them. 

Somewhere in that process, Cat is trying to trap what made her stop and look in the first place. Spending so long with a subject reveals things that a camera can’t capture. It doesn’t need explaining why it matters to her; she wants the painting to hold enough of that original fascination for someone else to find their own way into it and discover something that belongs entirely to them.

@catedinoff