Born in 1948, Catherine Bayle has been painting for almost fifteen years. She prefers oil, but also works in pastel, gouache, engraving and, more recently, « collage ».

Her work is dominated by color, with heightened contrasts of flat backgrounds that reinforce the viewer's confrontation with bold, brightly colored faces or figures.

Simplified forms, often stylized, emphasize the essential balance of color, line and volume. Her's is a plastic language that suggests abstraction as well as the exoticism of distant places.

Catherine lives and works between « here » and « elsewhere ». Here means Brittany, where she lives in Pont-Aven. Elsewhere is a mixture of real and imaginary travels including :

• The Marquesas islands (French Polynesia) where she spent several weeks in 1994,
• Japan, discovered through albums of prints — figures of the Kabuki theater, as well as Sumo wrestling,
• Africa, via masks and sculptures,
• Ireland, the closest island to Brittany both physically and culturally.