Catherine Fostervoll
(Née Catherine Archer-Wills)
Catherine Fostervoll is a British-born, Oslo-based mixed media artist whose nature-inspired paintings explore resilience, healing, and the hidden connections that sustain life.
Her subjects range from reflective water surfaces and underwater viewpoints, to tangled forest floors, snow-bound wildlife, and microscopic ecosystems of moss, lichens, and roots. Across these different subjects runs a shared theme: the experience of moving through difficulty toward renewal, and the quiet strength found in the natural world.
“I want looking at my pictures to be like coming for a walk with me, through the forest or along the seashore, sharing stories and noticing all the details and wonders around us.”
Working with reclaimed papers, collage, printmaking techniques, and direct impressions from bark, stone, and other organic textures, Catherine builds layered surfaces that hold traces of place and time. The process itself mirrors natural systems — accumulative, adaptive, and interconnected. Fragments of lived experience are laid down to become the strata which supports future growth.
Moving from the South West of England to Norway has deepened her relationship with wild landscapes and seasonal extremes, reinforcing her interest in endurance, stillness, and transformation. Her work often emerges from moments of immersion in nature, where attention slows and small details become luminous.
“We all know there are problems in the world. Eventually, you end up with a room full of whistleblowers and nobody can think for the noise. What we really need now are solutions, clear sight, and a willingness to accept that we are part of a greater whole.”
Catherine believes that while we are constantly reminded of what is wrong in the world, what people often need in order to keep caring — and keep trying — is hope, clarity, steadiness, and a sense of connection. Her paintings aim to create spaces where viewers can pause, breathe, and rediscover the quiet sense of wellbeing which comes from connection with the Earth.
Rather than offering escape, the work invites presence: an opportunity to reflect, regroup, and remember that life persists in even the most overlooked places.
Biography
Catherine grew up in West Sussex. Her mother is an illustrator, graphic designer and teacher, now retired, and her father is garden designer Anthony Archer-Wills, aka. Animal Planet’s ‘The Pool Master’.
From her earliest childhood, Catherine was passionate about art, nature and the hidden worlds all around us. She spent untold hours in and around ponds and streams, or building dens in the woods near her home.
Always keen on creative experimentation, and connecting pictures and stories, on finishing school she did a year’s Art and Design Foundation course in Worthing, then travelled to Cornwall to study for a Ba (Hons) in Illustration at Falmouth College of Arts (now Falmouth University). After graduating, she relocated to Devon in South West England, where she worked as a freelance illustrator, concept artist and occasional silver jeweller for 20 years, doing everything from children’s books to metal album covers, animated theatre backdrops to video game concept art. She eventually settled into creating book jacket art for young adult fantasy fiction.
After a period of burnout, a result of undiagnosed ADHD, she took some time out to recover and re-evaluate, and subsequently rebuilt her art practice from the ground up, resulting in a radical change of direction, moving away from realist fantasy and digital art, and into her current more expressive and personal mixed media work.
She now lives in Oslo with her husband Rune, and their rescued monstera plant, Laufey, who is making a spirited attempt to take over the apartment.
