Katherine Edwards McCubbin
Katherine Edwards McCubbin is an artist who juggles her time between her serene country studio in the Pyrenees ranges, Central Victoria, and her bustling Melbourne workspace, all while being shadowed by her pint-sized toy boy muse, Humphrey the Pomeranian. This dynamic duo whip up inspired creations for city slickers who may or may not know what "chiarascuro" means! With Humphrey by her side, Katherine proves that you can work with animals, and that art and a little canine chaos make for the perfect creative recipe.
"Alchemy", her solo show in 2024, continued Katherine's preoccupation with water (childhood memories of Sydney harbour), natural history and how these experiences can transmute into magical visions. Italy's Baroque water fountains and sculptures have been the catalyst for the subject matter of these paintings, the artist returning there when possible, ever since an 8 week Artist Residency in 2015 that she undertook in Rome.
Katherine has created a symbolic visual language, a mark-making short-hand of outlines and apparitions, via oil paint, across the canvas surface - spots, spirals, faces, flowers, snails, shells, bow-ties and ribbons - appear atomised or vaporised in a swirling vortex of texture and form.
Artist Biography
Medieval alchemy drawings, Surrealism, and Italian Baroque inform Katherine's artworks. Domestic exotica and still life interiors provide backdrops to playing with gender roles, characters often appear in theatrical compositions. From folklore and fairytales, to the burlesque and Edwardian fashion illustrations, floral ornamentation, objects of antiquity and decorative patterning, Katherine's influences are wide ranging. Her artworks lean into the mysterious, ambiguous nature of being in a liminal space, as an artist, euphoric and at times, melancholic. Figures and forms are suspended within an altered yet familiar reality, where time does not dictate our every waking moment. The need to slow down and be spiritually and bodily in harmony with nature pulls at her paintbrush, escaping a chaotic urban jungle for the suspended reality of Katherine's art studio.
The images are within the tradition of Beardsley and Blake, big names, but there is a divine use of space and composition, that draws the subject matter out from the surreal and into the recognisable. For this, Katherine imposes a heightened degree of detail and limitless depth. The depth itself, is a swirling vortex of both texture and form, receding though the picture plane and into another space. This is when the spaces unite, and to unite it all, a figure, a face a torso and the weightless, floating, ethereal, spirits filling the void. The dream like quality extends across the composition, flowers become faces, trees, attenuated and anthropomorphic, are figures, that rise and fall amongst an entanglement of moss, lichen, leaf-litter, and the firm embrace of the ground itself.
Exhibitions & Events:
2024: Solo Show "Alchemy" (L.E.G., Melbourne)
2023: Guest Judge, Heffernan Drawing Prize
2022: "Feminisms 1974 - 2022" Group show, George Paton gallery, Melbourne
2016 - to present, Guest Curator, Mission To Seafarers, ANL Maritime Art Prize
2019, Group Summer Show, Libby Edwards Galleries, Melbourne
2018 (Jan 17- 3 Feb): Solo exhibition, “Feminam Plantarum” Rubicon Ari gallery, Melbourne
2017: Group show, FRANFEST poster exhibition, Ace Open Lion Arts Centre, Adelaide
2017, Group show, 550 Swan St Gallery
2015-2017, Womens Art Register, committee member
2015: International Conference of The Image, University of Berkeley, San Francisco, Presentation of Masters Research Project “Body of Water”
2015: F-Word What is Feminism? Group show, George Paton gallery, Melbourne
2015: Masters Completion Seminar presentation, Founders Gallery, Elizabeth Murdoch Building
2015: Solo show, “Body of Water”, Brightspace gallery, Melbourne
2015: Rome Art Program residency
2014: VCA Travel Grant for Rome field research trip
2011: Carnival, Jinks Creek Gallery, Gippsland, Victoria
2010: Finalist Brunswick Street Gallery Works On Paper Prize
Education:
2015: Completed Master of Fine Arts, Victorian College of the Arts
2013: Australian Postgraduate Scholarship Award Research (APA), Master of Fine Arts by Research, Victorian College of the Arts
2001: Bachelor of Design degree (First class Honours), Exhibition/Interior Design, Swinburne University, Melbourne
winner of Design Award for honours thesis
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CONTACT
+61 411 448 228 / katie.ed7@gmail.com
Melbourne, Australia