Night Shift

In this work I wanted to depict a sense of the deep sustaining power of a mother’s love. Its a strange thing, when I was up night after night, feeding, calming and comforting my children as babies no matter how exhausted I was I also cherished these intimate moments together, realising they don’t last forever. In this piece I wanted to build on an earlier drawing. I wanted to show a sense of the mother nurturing this germinating new life with her entire being. And although she may be up alone with her baby she is not. She is watched and guided by all the other mothers before her. She draws innate strength from this love, a love she is passing to her new little one in a beautiful cycle of tenderness.

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Despite having her artistic leanings spotted early by her first grade teacher and confirmed when selected for a highly competitive Special Arts Scholarship, Cate studied at University and worked in sensible jobs trying to improve health in the community. Her artist’s heart however was never far from the surface and she continued to find creative outlets to express her take on life. Focussing on photography for a time she won some photography awards and published photographs in a variety of mediums. Meantime she continued to explore fine arts studying photography, fashion and art at home and abroad.
In 1997, Cate started painting more intensely. Inspired, she quite her job, travelled to Italy achieving top marks for her art studies in Florence at the Instituto Lorenzo de’ Medici. She found sensible yet well remunerated jobs including contracts with UN organisations which afforded her the opportunity to live and work in Europe.
Cate has published a successful art book Fremantle: City of Colour, an artist’s celebration of the port city’ and has an interactive sketchbook ‘Passages’ at the Brooklyn Art Library, NYC. Cate’s expressive and colourful style is full of the strength of feeling which imbues her work. Although she largely works using a combination of pen and ink, layered with colour and collage, she is also interested in new technologies and the amazing possibilities of digital mediums.
In recent times, Cate has been exploring maternity and motherhood in a series of mixed media pictures. An emotionally rich subject it draws on universal themes of love, beauty and loss.