“It was very demanding, that light,” says Catherine as she thinks back to her voyage on The Svalbard Line last summer. “I couldn't sleep. I felt that I was going through a sort of mania, trying to capture as much of what I was seeing, trying to catch some of that energy. It's such a powerful landscape, erupting out of the sea. And it is absolutely mind-blowing in its shapes.”

A qualified skipper who has been sailing her whole life, Catherine has read widely about the explorers who first sailed the northernmost latitudes. “I thought about doing it in my own tiny boat but it would take me about six months just to get up there!” So doing the journey with Hurtigruten was like a dream come true. It also meant she could focus entirely on her art, leaving MS Trollfjord’s experienced Captain to take care of the navigation.

From the sketches she made while standing at her small table on the deck of MS Trollfjord last summer, Catherine has created a series of paintings of Norway’s coast. It’s fascinating to see the gradual changes in colour and mood depicted in oils and watercolours as she sailed north, from the lively greens of Åndalsnes and the white energy of the Arctic Circle to the surprisingly clay tones of Svalbard and the glacial blues of 79 degrees north.