After training and working as an Occupational Therapist. Cathy embarked on an Art Journey in 2008, her earlier paintings were predominantly circle based abstracts. Learning as from experimentation, these developed into urban landscapes, fuelled by a lifelong interest in buildings. A natural evolution after a childhood dominated by giant decaying mills in the North of England's Cotton industry.

Cathy exhibits her paintings around the UK, and Europe, and was Invited to join group exhibitions in Japan in 2021 and India in 2022. Her art is in collections as far afield as Canada, Africa and New Zealand. Oxford University Press commissioned Cathy to create the piece to illustrate the 2016 Oxford Almanack. This painting of St Catherine's College Quad is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Other notable Commissions are for the Reception area of Bahlsen's UK Headquarters and to commemorate 600 years of the Royal Latin School in Buckingham.

Cathy Read is a member of the Society of Women Artists exhibiting with them in London since 2013, receiving the Barbara Tate Memorial Award in 2015. She has also shown with the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour in London.

Cathy appeared as a contestant on Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year in 2016. Returning as a wildcard in 2017. The same year, she was shortlisted for Artist and Illustrators Artist of the Year and received the Wild and Tame award.

She lives in a chapel near Buckingham, in the UK, which she converted with her husband. Her studio is in Tingewick