CATE LOUGHRAN

 

REVIEWS (partial list)

"The images are strong and rise to the elevation of symbols...Even in moments of delicacy, the strength of her imagery is stunning." Isthmus

"Cate Loughran's quietly stunning show...imaginative artist and rigorous technition...gently surrealist.

Capital Times

Carol Harmel from the New Art Examiner wrote that Cate Loughran's art is "seen as delicate, graceful, and very clean, as the touch of a butterfly's wing."

"She creates almost classical studies, with colors and forms challenging associations and perceptions."

Capital Times

"a heady mixture of sensuality and spirituality... an animation and exuberance not often found. What ultimately recommends these works is their unrelenting optimism and their ability to act as a palate cleanser for the world-weary viewer." Michael Bonesteel

  

ARTIST STATEMENT

I consider myself a visionary. I view my artwork as inspiring, uplifting, and peaceful. I work with nature, both mother nature and the human nature. I paint, photograph, draw, and most of the time work in the world of mixed media. I like the freedom to use whatever techniques necessary to create the most perfect image. I like the freedom to work with landscape and portraiture and floral and any other genre I wish.

Illuminated Realism is a term I coined to describe my work. Sometimes simply beautiful, other times metaphysical, always reverent to nature and the human condition.

I'm one of the fortunate few who has been able to do art work in earnest, but without the need to sell. I am my own muse, along with my relationships, passions, and, my entire life experience.

There is a simplicity in my art that sometimes may be misunderstood. It's not that my work is devoid of intellectual content...It's that I have distilled my thoughts, process and imagery to the point, that it has come full circle, and once again, it is simple, clean, and innocent...Intellectual sophistication with a pure heart...................

My favorite statement about my art..."Cate, when i look at your work i am being reassured...it is as if someone was making these works for me." Kostas Epimenidis Thessalonik Greece

 

A STATEMENT ABOUT CATE LOUGHRAN’S ART WORK

"If spending time with Loughran’s manipulated and re-imagined realities are not alone enough to heal our spirits, they certainly point us in the right direction to go and find the sights that will make us whole again. Putting the viewer in touch with the finest moments this life has to offer, and thereby showing one how to look for them, is her great gift.

 

Cate Loughran creates images our souls long for. They are a delicious, visionary teasing of our physical senses. Vibrant, richly colored flowers floating among stars in the black of space. A country road rolling into the distance, into cornfields, forests and a blue sky filled with clouds. Children and animals distilled into the sweet purity of their essences. Cate Loughran selects figures, objects and scenes that she has photographed or painted and reassembles them into new and sometimes surprising compositions. The melding of these individual elements is technically seamless and usually quite convincing, even though they border on or plunge headlong into the surreal.

 

They give us a glimpse into the majestic beauty and exquisite delicacy of life on earth that hint at something more, something deeper and barely tangible just beyond our grasp. They are sensual and very palpable reminders in this world of the ecstasies lying just beyond the veil of our everyday awareness.

 

Yet Loughran’s gift is not one gained from some pie-in-the-sky naïve fantasy, but rather from many years of honing her artistic skills combined with a very personal and life-long spiritual pursuit of the truly divine and ineffable."

 

Michael Bonesteel

Professor of art history at the Art Institute of Chicago and author of Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings (Rizzoli).

 

EDUCATION

B.S., M.A., M.F.A., DEPT. OF ART University of Wisconsin, Madison

with honors and scholarships

M.S., Dept. of Counseling Psychology, University of Wisconsin, Madison

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Professional artist, widely collected, including Art Institute of Chicago.

National awards and over 200 shows. 1975-present

 

EXHIBITIONS AND COMPETITIONS (partial list)

John Hancock Center, Chicago, IL, A Celebration of Family

Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, Images of Women****

John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI, One Person Show

Rhode Island School of Design, One Person Show

Bernal Gallery, Chicago, One Person Show, Madison Art Center, One Person Show

Bergstum Maher Art Center, Neenah, WI, One Person Show, Burpee Art Center, Rockford IL****

Evanston Art Center, Evanston, WI, Two Person Show

Jaques Baruque Gallery, Chicago, IL, Van Stratton Gallery, Chicago, IL

Santa Fe Gallery of Photography, Group Show, University of Iowa, Ames, Refocus****

University of Wisconsin, Madison, One Person Show

John Michael Kohler, The Human Image in American Art,

Alverno College, Milwaukee, WI, One Person Show

Infinite Eye Gallery, Milwaukee, WI, One Person Show, Focus Gallery, SF, CA, First Light

Milwaukee Art Center, Group Show, Dallas Art Center, Woman

Eighteenth Annual Photo Metro Competition, SF, CA, 2001****

Northern California Center for the Arts, One Person Show

Anchorage Art Center, Tahoe Art Center, One Person Show, Tahoe Art Center****

24th Annual Art on Paper, Annapolis, MD, The Stage Gallery, Massapequa, NY

De Ricci Gallery, Edgewood College, Madison, WI, One Person Show

Commonwealth Gallery, Madison, WI, One Person Show ****awards

 

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS (partial list)

Art Institute of Chicago, Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts,

Milwaukee Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Portland, Maine

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin

 

MIXED MEDIA: Generally my process is collecting images, which include my photographs, drawings, paintings, and others as well. An idea strikes me, somehow... I then proceed to find the images that will best illustrate the idea. This part of the process is something like making a collage, but with the computer, via Photoshop. I have used up to eleven photographs in one image, sometimes I use one. after I refine the image, I print it on cotton paper. I then go into the piece with soft pastel, sometimes water color, and even glitter. I spend, sometimes days, working the image after the print stage.

 

PAINTING: My painting style was developed while watching Roberto Lupetti paint. He was born and raised in Milan Italy. He earned five degrees from the Italian Royal Academy of Fine Arts, was a team member for the refurbishment of the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, and immigrated to the U.S after World War II. He is best known for his Renaissance art and large murals.

I had the good fortune of sitting with him, watching him paint, and listening to his wonderful stories about his youth, artists he knew, and the things he has learned throughout his long and fruitful life.

 

PASTEL: Lucus Samaras, a New York artist born in Greece inspired me to pursue soft pastel. I saw a show of his pastels that knocked my socks off. I then began to work with them, with much frustration initially, but with time I was able master the technique and now I use pastel as comfortably as I use my camera and the brush.