CATE DUDLEY

AKA: Cate Dudley

• Contemporary
• Painter
• Established

Cate Dudley was born in Hobart and raised in Kenthurst, Western Sydney. In 1988, Cate explored philosophy, Buddhism and feminism at Canterbury University in New Zealand, and followed these studies with a Bachelor of Arts (Visual Arts) from the University of New England, from which she graduated in 1992.

Leaving the Northern Rivers for the Blue Mountains, Cate won first prize in the 1993 Blue Mountains Art Prize for her large etching, ‘Powercuts’. Cate then gained a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Western Sydney in 1996. This was followed by a period of painting, teaching and exhibiting in local Blue Mountains art shows, and included selection as a finalist in the 2005 Jacques Cadry Memorial Prize. In 2007 Cate commenced a Master of Art at Sydney College of Fine Arts and had her first solo exhibition for 11 years at Hat Hill Gallery. Due to demand Cate’s work has been shown regularly at Hat Hill Gallery ever since.

Cate says, “I have been playing with paint and images since I was two years’ old and I still enjoy what happens. I make images to celebrate and affirm what it is to be a human being. My life revolves around the great and small matters of the heart; children, cups of tea, friendships, an elderly blue dog and the amazing Blue Mountains wilderness which surrounds me.

“I like the way images create a narrative or suggest mythologies and I enjoy the process of coaxing out those which lie just around the corner from work-a-day consciousness. The content generally circles around dichotomies of domesticity and wildness, the mundane and the magical. Although these works are intrinsically personal they can be received as a metaphor for the shared human condition.”

Cate has lived in Katoomba for the past 17 years. When she is not painting, Cate is raising her son and teaching