The BrassWorks Gallery in partnership with Studio Montclair is deeply honored to present a memorial exhibition and fundraiser celebrating the life and work of Catherine Kinkade – a painter of extraordinary feeling, a generous and devoted teacher, and one of the most warmly cherished figures in the Montclair arts community for nearly four decades. The community is invited to come celebrate Catherine Kinkade – her art, her generosity, and the irreplaceable mark she left on this place and on the people lucky enough to have known her.

Catherine passed away late last year, and the loss has been felt throughout this community in ways that are still hard to put into words. She left behind a legacy of luminous artwork and an even more extraordinary devotion to the artists and organizations she loved. Among those closest to her heart was Studio Montclair, which she joined in its earliest days – nearly 28 years ago – and served with tireless passion and deep commitment, including decades on its Executive Board. It was Catherine’s own tender wish that a sale and fundraiser be held in her memory to benefit Studio Montclair, and this exhibition is a loving fulfillment of that wish. Through it all, her husband Merwin was by her side – her devoted partner and most steadfast champion.

To stand before Catherine’s paintings is to understand why landscapes called to her for a lifetime. Her work moves between the keenly observed and the deeply felt – plein air studies alive with loose, gestural marks and vibrant color; large atmospheric canvases where hills and dunes dissolve into washes of blue and violet; quieter watercolors where mist and gray settle over fields like memory. Whether she was capturing a Normandy village rooftop, the sweep of storm light over farmland, or the abstract shimmer of snow on rock, she painted the emotional truth of a place alongside its physical one. Her touch was confident and tender in equal measure.

A Master Pastelist of the Pastel Society of America and a founder of Viridian Print Studio, Catherine worked across pastel, oil, and monotype, exhibiting her paintings at museums, galleries, and international exhibitions throughout her career. Her commissioned landscapes entered the collections of Tiffany, AT&T, Exxon, The Nature Conservancy, and dozens of other corporate and private collectors around the world.

She also gave generously as a teacher – for more than 40 years at the Montclair Art Museum School of Art, and for many years as Artist-in-Residence at Van Vleck Gardens – shaping the next generation of painters with the same warmth and rigor she brought to everything else in her life.