Biography

Tasmanian artist Catherine Stringer is best known for her dreamy underwater images.  Soulful and evocative, the underwater paintings invite reflection and  metaphor.  The worlds above and below the water can be taken to represent the conscious and the unconscious, the physical and the spiritual, the rational and the intuitive, or any other duality.   It is the convergence and integration of these dualities that is the focus of Catherine's work.

Catherine has worked extensively with other artists and performers in a variety of collaborations.  This  includes improvised performance painting with theatre, music and dance, and the painting/poetry series Dancers and Dreamers.

Catherine has had 6 major solo exhibitions in Hobart and Melbourne.  Resonance in 2003, Salted With Fire in 2004, and Testing the Water  and  Dancers and Dreamers in 2006 showed her underwater paintings, whilst Free Flow in 2003 and Offstage in 2004 showed performance work.  Recently Catherine had her first solo show in Europe, Still Waters, in Vallauris , France.

Based in Hobart, Tasmania, Catherine was artist-in-residence at the Whittle Ward Palliative Care Unit in 2005, where she painted a series of large underwater paintings Waking to the Light, which was exhibited in March 2006 at the Moonah Arts Centre.  In 2006 she also completed a public art commission for the Royal Hobart Hospital. 

In 2007 Catherine was selected to participate in the residency program at AIR-Vallauris in the south of France.  This was for a two month period in May and June, at the end of which she held a solo exhibition of her work at the Galerie Aqui Siam Ben. Catherine's work was also exhibited in group shows in Vallauris and Mougins Village in France, and her work has been acquired for the AIR Vallauris permanent collection.

In August 2008 Catherine spent one month at the Red Gate Gallery Studios in Beijing. This was an exciting and stimulating experience, particularly as it coincided with the Olympic Games. Work developed from this residency was shown in the solo exhibitions  Face Value in Hobart in April 2009 and  See View at the King Island Cultural Centre in December 2009. Catherine is planning to return to Beijing in the near future.

Catherine's next solo exhibition, which explores the underwater world of Tasmanian rivers, will open on 23 April 2010 at the Goulburn Street Gallery in Hobart.