Catharine MacKenzie

Catharine loves libraries, which explains why she was so excited to do the artwork for the 2000 Club. Her favourite books include: Wind in the Willows, The Phantom Tollbooth, Alice In Wonderland, Emil and the Detectives, and At the Back of the North Wind, The Borrowers, Mary Poppins, and anything by Hans Christian Andersen. She also loves comic books including Uncle Scrooge and Little Lulu.

Even though it's hard for Catharine to recall the many titles she has borrowed from libraries over the years, she does remember the very first book she borrowed. She found it on the shelves of the Summerside library in beautiful Prince Edward Island -- a thrilling discovery! A thick yellow storybook on the Children's shelf. The cover felt rough, and opened onto pink and brown end papers that led into a wonderful world but...that's all she can remember. Catharine wishes to find and read it again.

Catharine was born in Nova Scotia, and her family moved to BC when she was six. Her debut as a painter came at the age of eight when she won an award in the Vancouver"Painting in the Parks" program. Her first book illustrations were in 1977 for The Houseless Mouse and The Bee Who Never Slept by Ray Logie. She then painted murals, drew lots of maps and diagrams and cartoons, designed displays and publications before getting back to story illustration in 1992 with Follow That Bus by Suzan Reid. Cricket Magazine began publishing her work the same year, the start of a lasting friendship. In 1994 she began writing and illustrating "Hip Hip Herrera" a monthly serial which ran in Spider Magazine.

Catharine prefers pen and ink and water colour for illustration but also paints in acrylics, sculpts dolls, makes miniature paintings and wood carvings. And her talent doesn't stop there! She runs Solo Studio Press, a small press imprint where she writes, illustrates, prints, and binds miniature books. The Workers of Ingnock and Dully is a Solo Studio Press publication that can be purchased from the Art-o-Mat display, (imagine, a vending machine that dispenses contemporary art!) at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Zoey is her favourite studio cat, and she never knocks paint pots over! Catharine's mother made her favourite teddy bear who wears a kilt. Her favourite place to be, other than looking at the ocean, is in a library.