Catherine Breer
How can your vision of the world not be influenced when you spend almost your entire childhood abroad? As the daughter of Methodist Missionaries, Catherine considers herself lucky to have spent the first 15 years of her life in Seoul, South Korea. It was there, during these formative years, that she developed her aesthetic - her sense of form, pattern and color - that has so dramatically shaped her life. While not exactly born with a paint brush in hand, Catherine did pick one up very early in her life and has not put it down since.
In 1982, she returned to the U.S. and attended Emory University and the Atlanta College of Art. She graduated from Emory in 1986 with a degree in Art History and moved to Boston, Massachusetts to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. In 1987 she began working as a graphic designer, a career path she followed until 2004 when annie|catherine was formed.
Her work made its formal "debut" in 2001 at the Freeport Community Library, and since then she has had numerous shows, including participating in "Art in Bloom" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Her work is in private collections world-wide.
Catherine and her family live in Freeport, Maine and on the rare occasions when she is not painting, she loves to garden, travel, cook, and play with her kids.
See Catherine's Web site: catherinebreer.com
Annie Darling
Growing up with a commercial photographer as a father and an interior designer as a mother, Annie is living proof that the apple really does not fall far from the tree. Surrounded by art and living near Chicago, Annie experienced countless trips to museums and galleries as a child, which inspired her to come home and recreate works of art. If Annie had a crystal ball she would have seen then that the artistic card sets she enjoyed creating for her mother each year for Christmas would someday become her career.
After the Darling family moved from the Windy City to Maine, she studied at the University of Oregon and after traveling to Europe, earned her degree in communications from the University of Southern Maine. Embarking on a career in graphic design, she opened her first design firm in Portland, Maine in 1990. Despite more than a decade of accolades and awards, Annie always felt like something was missing. So, in 2003, she returned to her love of cards and created her first line of note cards, which became part of the annie|catherine line in 2004.
Annie lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, with her husband and two boys. When she is not hanging out with them, she is most likely cooking, entertaining or creating something new.