Catherine Buchanan was encouraged to paint by her mother who gave her and her siblings their own space for being creative. When she grew up, she studied architectural rendering at Diablo Valley College in California and photography at San Francisco State University. Fueled by creative independence, she left for the South Pacific in her early forties on a forty foot sailboat and visited more than fifty islands in several years of sailing. She lived in American Samoa for six years before moving to Hawaii in 2005. She is currently writing a book about her passage across the Pacific and life in American Samoa.

Catherine’s paintings are on display in Pago Pago, American Samoa. You can view her photography at http//memory.palace.org/catherine.buchanan/work/.

Got Google Earth? You can download Catherine's geographic locations as .KML data.