Catherine Kingham

Light Journeys is a deeply personal exhibition by Canberra-based artist Catherine Kingham, exploring themes of resilience, grief, gratitude and renewal. The works reflect a six-year journey in which Kingham gradually rebuilt the physical capacity to walk from her home in Kingston to her brother’s house in Narrabundah, following the onset of chronic illness and her retirement from medical practice. Created in the hours either side of dawn, the paintings capture fleeting moments of transformation, when darkness gives way to light and the world quietly reveals itself anew.

Rooted in both place and inner experience, Kingham’s practice draws on her background in Jungian dream analysis, merging internal emotional landscapes with observed environments. Once working primarily in ink wash, she has more recently embraced digital painting, allowing her to continue her practice despite physical limitations. In Light Journeys, concrete paths, suburban gardens and built forms dissolve the boundaries between inner and outer worlds, animate and inanimate, shadow and illumination. Light becomes both subject and metaphor — a tribute to love, loss and the profound beauty found in moments of stillness, change and connection.