Cartlidge’s paintings are quietly deceptive in their illusion of stillness. Look more carefully and her fascination with natural light and the way it which it falls and moves with the passing of time, is revealed. Movement is thus created across her canvases, even in the smallest of corners whether in the reflection of light through water or off the pearlescent interior of a mussel shell.

Deceptively strong form sits behind her compositions giving one a calm and secure sense of balance and order. Cartlidge often triangulates her objects alongside a repeated use of the multiples of 3, which in numerology refers to the divine trinity and a satisfying sense of eternity. And yet a sense of mortality exists between the placement of everyday objects, some of which will outlive us all, with the impermanent organic.

Cartlidge was raised in Cornwall before completing her formal education at Cardiff Art College, graduating in 1987 with a degree in Fine Art. That same year she was selected for the prestigious Whitworth Young Contemporaries. More recently she was awarded funding from the Arts Council of Wales to study with the Cornish painter, Alice Mumford in 2014. She has also studied with Rose Hilton at the Newlyn School of Art. She has lived and worked in Wales since 1987 and was elected a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2017.