The Sombrero Galaxy Painting

Cathrin Machin is one of Australia's fastest growing contemporary artist, with a reputation for boldly engaging the primal questions covering the basis of reality and existence. Born in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, England in 1986 – the youngest child of an inventive hard-working couple who ran a small clothing business attached to the family home. From an early age, Cathrin spent countless hours contemplating the stars and watching science documentaries, leading to a life-long obsession with science, reality, and the depths of space. After studying mechanical engineering at Loughborough University, England, she embarked on a decade-long career in the video-game industry, culminating in her leading a project that won “Best Australian Video Game 2015” in the IGN Black beta awards. Shortly after she chose to follow her ambitions to become an artist. Having started painting in 2016, she has gone on to host a solo gallery exhibition in Sydney Australia, has hosted the highest crowd-funded painting project in the world, and holds the record as Australia's highest crowd-funded artist of all time. This has allowed her to develop a huge a client list that stretches to every corner of the globe and includes several prolific scientists, science communicators, and chief officers from top fortune 500 companies. Always starting from a black canvas, the artwork uses prime coloured oil paint and phosphorescent pigments in bold gestural strokes combined with subtle smooth gradients that explore a sense of flow, density, and luminosity. They allow the viewer to contemplate the sheer scale of the universe and how we as individuals, fit within in it. Ultimately, Machin’s work strives to ask the biggest questions one can - “Why are we here, where did we come from, and what does it mean?” In addition to her abstract space forms, she works with several astrophotographers and compiles images that are then painted to represent real outer space phenomenon