Collection: Cate Day

Maleny-based artist Cate Day studied art throughout her secondary and tertiary education. She focussed on a career in teaching and then school administration as she brought up her two, now adult, children. Cate enjoyed teaching but always looked back wistfully at her first passion, art.

The pull to make art eventually won. In 2014, Cate left her teaching career to become a professional artist. To help make the transition, she studied ceramics with Ray Cavill at ClaySchool Brisbane and completed a Diploma of Visual Arts.

Cate’s paintings and ceramics are predominantly expressionist in style and seek to capture her emotional response to the landscape she is in, or whichever clay body is capturing her attention. In her painting and her ceramics it’s all about vibrant colour, strong lights and darks and expressive texture and shapes. Finger marks and brush marks are never completely tidied away. Cate wants the viewer to know the piece was made by hand.

Since becoming a professional artist, Cate’s ceramics and paintings have been acquired by collectors across Australia from as far north as Cairns and as far west as Perth.