Katherine Edwards McCubbin
 

"I see my painting process as an intimate performance, a serendipitous marriage of spontaneity with the intellectual.  The physical encounter with the picture surface, being in the moment, whilst exploring the past via the conceptual realm of memories and experiences. I often imagine what it would have been like to live in the shoes of historical women of botany, such as empress Josephine Bonaparte (who collected Australian exotica), and colonial-era Australian botanists Georgiana Molloy and Olive Pink, who worked with first nations indigenous people to help identify native plants and herbs, their discoveries recorded via journal drawings and diaries. Pages from my drawing journals attempt to describe my relationship to nature, the universe, infusing quotidian experiences into an alchemical interpretation on the paint surface, of what is felt in the moment, what could exist beyond our conditioned way of seeing the world around us.  It is a hope that human beings, fauna and flora can one day coexist in balance, and we can counteract the increasingly shrinking natural world, environmental destruction and horrors of war, i offer the initial concept sketches for this utopian vision...a symbolic language, a love letter to femininity and nature." (Katherine Edwards McCubbin, 2024).

 

Together with her artistic partner in crime, David McCubbin,  they share a passion for the wonder of natural history and the shape and colour of objects. David himself with an artistic lineage that connects to his great grandfather, (the Australian Impressionist Frederick McCubbin) and subsequent generations of family artists carries the muse with him. It is reflected in their taste for objects. The house they share drips with his family’s narrative of portraits, landscapes and the lived in interiors through time. 

 

Medieval alchemy drawings, the Baroque fountains and grottos of Italy, inform Katherine's paintings and drawings, as well as questioning concepts of social etiquette, sexuality and beauty. 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.

 

Katherine's use of blocking with line and dense blackness, accentuates the images, whilst feathering, hatching and the understanding of lithographic techniques make the composition atmospheric, mesmerising, and dream-like. 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.  If this were a telescope looking at the midnight sky, we would interpret these images as pulsars, they blaze with an intensity. (DM)

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“nature represents what woman herself represents for man...a kingdom and a place of exile” (Simone De Beauvoir). 

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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