Star Artist - CATHERINE HEARSE 

Catherine Hearse studied Sculpture at the Tasmanian School of Art, where she was actively discouraged from continuing to work with her chosen materials of fabric, crochet and knitted fibres and from working on a small scale.  She has been using hand-sewn paper and fabric collage since 1980, and in 1996 recommenced making  sculpture  with crochet fibre, fabric, wire and wood.

Catherine’s work often deals with the abuse of children and women. For example her pieces for the Women's Art Register exhibition Bias Binding were hand-sewn collage entitled Heroic Figure 1 and 2, depicting two women survivors of child sexual abuse as people to be admired for the heroic struggle they had undertaken.

More recent works have dealt with the fairy stories read to Catherine in her childhood, often highlighting the impractical and  bizarre qualities of those tales.
For example, Rapunzel's hair has become dreadlocked as a result of the witch's frequent use of her tresses as a ladder, and Cinderella's beauty seems somewhat questionable when attired in the ballroom equipage popular in the times the stories were put to paper by Perrault.

Catherine’s painting and drawing also focuses on the depiction of Character in the faces of children and adults. In an attempt to demonstrate  the life lived and the unique nature of everyone's experience in the facial expression of her imaginary sitters.

The artist is currently working with anthropomorphic objects, creatures etc. in an attempt to depict the life a child instills into her surroundings. She is also completing a series of collage pieces about the history of Australia as told to her in primary school, then given  her own particular insight.

"Bride Plant"
Catherine Hearse 2007
ink on paper 19x14cm