My paintings are portals - reflections of the quiet, complex relationships we hold with place, self and the unseen communicated through Australia’s landscape.
Cate Maddy is a Melbourne-based artist living and working on Wurundjeri Country.
Her practice is deeply connected to the Australian bushland that surrounds her home and beyond, which provides both the emotional and conceptual foundation for her work. Through layered, gestural mark-making and an instinctive use of colour and texture, Cate creates paintings that move between stillness and motion - spaces that invite reflection, memory, and sensory engagement.
Holding a Bachelor of Fine Art from RMIT University, Cate has exhibited widely across Australia, with her work held in both public and private collections in Australia, London, and the United States. She has presented numerous solo exhibitions, including at Grainger Gallery (ACT), AK Bellinger Gallery (NSW), and Fenton & Fenton (VIC), and has been a finalist in respected prizes such as the Omnia Prize, Kennedy Prize, and the John Leslie Art Prize.
Cate’s contemporary paintings explore abstraction as a way of expressing what cannot be easily seen or said - encounters with nature, time, and identity that are felt as much as they are observed.
