July Artist of the Month – Meet Cathy Gruetzke Blais

Cathy Gruetzke-Blais is an artist and art educator. She works full-time at Fay School in Southboro, teaching children ages 3 – 14. Originally from Rhode Island, she has lived in Massachusetts for most of her adult life. She holds BFA and MAT degrees from Tufts University. A twenty-two-year resident of Framingham, Cathy creates mainly acrylic paintings and sometimes abstracted mixed media pieces in her space at Howard Street Studios in Framingham. Additionally, she has experience as a scenic artist for theaters and a designer for public art projects.

Cathy paints because she is compelled to. It makes her feel whole and productive. She is inspired by vibrant colors that can be found in nature, mainly in flowers. Something awakens her senses and makes her feel alive when walking in natural spaces where color becomes the dominant and uniting element. She often photographs her experiences and later determines which full scenery shot or small detail of a flower image will make the cut to become the inspiration for her next painting. Cathy starts by sketching and laying out colors as they were seen. But then there is something that happens in the creative process that is best described as meditative and intuitive. Call it the right brain or the left brain, or perhaps a mix of the two, intuition kicks in and it becomes clear what to do next on the painting, even if it is not in the photograph. Solutions in her paintings often come in the forms of color and texture. Cathy believes it is important to follow your intuition when working. It helps you achieve a state of “flow” in which interesting things can happen in your art.