St Albans-based artist Catherine Fenton is holding an exhibition at a local gallery for a week from next Monday, April 25.

Entitled Without a Compass, Canadian-born Catherine is exhibiting her highly textured work created by combining paint and collage at the Nude Tin Gallery in Hatfield Road until Sunday, May 1.

The exhibition is named after a series of paintings using ordinance and survey maps as a background which are symbolic of life’s pathways and choices, of journeys taken and dreamed of as the paper map becomes increasingly assigned to history thanks to technology.

Catherine has worked as a Spanish and French interpreter for immigration and social services which brought her into contact with some of the most disadvantaged people.

That inspired her to create the “Don’t Forget to Flush” exhibition along with Nude Tin Can Gallery and the UN-Water World Toilet Day, to highlight the lack of toilets in developing countries.

The exhibition was featured internationally on UN-Water’s website and locally in the gallery, involving schools by creating a children’s art competition and raising enough money to pay for a school toilet block in Haiti and village toilets in Sierra Leone and Burundi.

As a result, Catherine was presented with a cultural innovation award in the St Albans Mayor’s Pride Awards.