Cate Maddy
Cate Maddy is a Melbourne based artist living and working on Wurundjeri Country. Her practice is grounded in deep connection to the Australian bushland that surrounds her home – an ever -evolving source of inspiration that shapes both the emotional and conceptual core of her work.
Holding a Bachelor of Fine Art from RMITUniversity, Cate has exhibited extensively across Australia and her work can be found in collections here and internationally. Her mixed media paintings explore the intersection between the material and the metaphysical, using colour and texture as tools for deeper inquiry. Drawing on principles of colour psychology, her work invites intuitive, sensory responses from viewers, while engaging with expansive themes such as identity, time, memory and perception.
Cate’s process is both instinctive and deliberate. She builds her surfaces through gestural mark-making, layering pigments and materials in a way that suggests both movement and stillness- moments suspended in space. Her approach embraces abstraction as a way of articulating what cannot be easily seen or said: a way of being in the worked that is felt more than understood.
With each work, Cate aims to create a space of contemplation- an encounter with nature not just as a visual subject, but as a lived and felt presence. Her paintings offer portals into something larger, reflecting the quiet, complex relationships we hold with place, self and the unseen.
EDUCATION
2004 Bachelor Fine Art with Distinction, RMIT
2005 Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training
1999 Diploma Visual Art, Box Hill Tafe
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Garden of Eden ,AKBellinger gallery
2024 Gentle Choir, Grainger gallery
2023 Sublime, AKBellinger Gallery NSW
2023 Shifting shadows, Grainger Gallery ACT
2022 Expecting flowers in the sky, Grainger Gallery ACT
2022My heart beats faster, Fenton & Fenton Gallery
2021I didn’t come here to stay, Grainger Gallery ACT
2021 Questionable arrangements, AK Bellinger Gallery
2017 Loud & Lunatic, Anthea Polson Art, Queensland
2012 Static gesture, Spiro and Grace Art Rooms, Brisbane
2012 Best Imitation, Anthea Polson Art, Gold Coast
2010 Hyperballad, Harrison Galleries, Sydney
2005 Dominant, Submissive, Red Gallery Melbourne
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Waverley Art Prize
2025 Omnia Prize
2025 Landscape exhibition, Grainger gallery
2024 Omnia Art Prize
2024 Affordable Art fair, Grainger gallery
2024 Floriade exhibition, Grainger gallery
2024 Landscape exhibition, Grainger gallery
2024Summer Salon, Art Images Gallery
2023 Omnia Art Prize
2023 Floriade exhibition, Grainger gallery
2022 Omnia Art Prize
2022 Affordable Art fair Melbourne, Fenton & Fenton
2021St Kevin’s Art Prize
2022 Opening exhibition Fenton & Fenton Gallery
2020 Feel Good Exhibition, Fenton & Fenton
2019 St Kevin’s Art prize
2018 Kennedy Prize
2018 AKBellinger gallery
2017 St Kevin’s Art Award
2016 ‘Reanimating the Inanimate’ Morton Bay Regional Gallery, Queensland
2011 New works, Colour and Form, SGAR Art Rooms, Brisbane
2011 Stockroom show, Harrison Galleries
2010 John Leslie Art Prize Exhibition, Gippsland Gallery, Sale
2009 Art Sydney, Harrison Galleries, Sydney
AWARDS & PRIZES
2025 Waverley Art Prize
2025 Omnia Prize
2024 Finalist Omnia Art Prize
2023 Finalist Omnia Art Prize
2022 Finalist Omnia Art Prize
2021 Finalist St Kevin’s Art Prize
2019 Finalist St Kevin’s Art Prize
2018 Finalist Kennedy Prize
2017 Finalist St Kevin’s Art Award
2011 Finalist Prometheus Award, Queensland
2010 Finalist Redlands Art Award, Queensland (withdrawn)
2010 Finalist John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Gallery, Sale
2009 Finalist Williamstown Contemporary Art Award
2007 Finalist MLC Art Prize
2006 Finalist John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Gallery, Sale
2004 Awarded the 2004 Siemans RMIT Fine Art Travel Scholarship
COLLECTIONS
Artbank - Sydney
Mater Private Hospital collection, Brisbane
St Kevin’s Toorak
Tolarno Boutique Hotels Melbourne
Private collections Australia, London and America.
Read more about Cate in our Meet the Artist series!
