Catherine Quinn Art and Photography

25/03/2025

A small little painting I finished yesterday called ‘Walking my path”, acrylic on canvas, 2025.

02/03/2025

I recently had the opportunity to photograph my friend and her mother, and take some very special portraits. They live in different countries, and it was the eve of my friend’s mother flying home. These are a few cropped images - conveying that beautiful feeling of connection and love - reminding me of the saying “a mother’s hug lasts long after she lets go’.

12/05/2024

Captured below are iPhone photos of Aurora Australis that I took last night in bayside Melbourne. The first two were taken at Ricketts Point, Beaumaris. The rest were taken in Sandringham, north of Half Moon Bay. Aurora australis was lighting up the southern skies of Australia due to an “extreme” geomagnetic solar storm.

The Aurora Australis was only faintly visible to the naked eye at these locations. A reminder that energetic transformations are ever present around us. A beautiful reminder that our sensory limitations often blind us to the dynamic and everpresent energy of the universe.

The physics behind the phenomenon of Aurora’s, originates from the sun. The sun is a ball of superhot gases made of electrically charged particles called ions. The ions, which continuously stream from the sun’s surface, are called the solar wind. As National Geographic explains:

“As solar wind approaches Earth, it meets Earth’s magnetic field. Without this magnetic field protecting the planet, the solar wind would blow away Earth’s fragile atmosphere, preventing all life. Most of the solar wind is blocked by the magnetosphere, and the ions, forced around the planet, continue to travel farther into the solar system.

Although most of the solar wind is blocked by the magnetosphere, some of the ions become briefly trapped in ring-shaped holding areas around the planet. These areas, in a region of the atmosphere called the ionosphere, are centered around Earth’s geomagnetic poles. The geomagnetic poles mark the tilted axis of Earth’s magnetic field. They lie about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) from the geographic poles, but are slowly moving.

In the ionosphere, the ions of the solar wind collide with atoms of oxygen and nitrogen from Earth’s atmosphere. The energy released during these collisions causes a colorful glowing halo around the poles—an aurora. Most auroras happen about 97-1,000 kilometers (60-620 miles) above Earth’s surface.”

03/05/2024

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42715

This head once belonged to a towering bodhisattva who presided over the entrance to the Central Cave at Northern Xiangtangshan. This site, which consists of only three cave temples with colossal figural sculptures, was once strategically located on the route between the capital at Ye and Jinyang, in...

03/05/2024

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/42700

Both the Eastern Wei (535–50) and the Northern Qi dynasties were ruled from a capital at Ye (presentday Linzhang) in southern Hebei province; both sponsored the construction of new cave temples. The complex built at Xiangtangshan (not far from the capital) dates from the Northern Qi period. It con...

03/05/2024

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/61698

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

03/05/2024

A Kneeling Bodhisattva from the 1st-3rd Century.

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

29/04/2024

Max Dupain’s ‘Mother and Child - 1952’

I’ve always admired the work of Max Dupain. This is a photo of his second wife, Diana, and his daughter Danina. Isn’t it lovely? Visual poetry ❤️

14/01/2023

Golden sunlight at Black Rock, watercolour, 2023, A3

14/01/2023

Phillip Island Memory, 2023, Arcylic on Canvas, 16 X 20 inch

15/01/2022

The key to learning is practice and experimentation…

15/01/2022

Practicing watercolour