Work

The Phallen Stars, 2023

The Dog Said Nothing, 2023

This is a limited first edition, book of short stories featuring The Knight of the Hunter and myself as we go about our business, they dog saying nothing. Published by Ambitious Outsiders Press

Saucy Postcards 2022

The Eyes of those Who Care 2021

A series of tiny paintings 5x5cm on glass paint and glitter. Each eye represents a caring role that others play in out domestic lives and a global humanitarian expression

The Rise and Fall of The Invisible Woman 2022 

This is a series of small scale drawings made as a diary whilst I was recovering from a fall which led to a broken elbow and charts my recovery. The drawings are made using one line and coloured with felt tip pen. A selection has been published as a zine by The Silverhill Press.

 

The Hands of Dead Celebrities: Class of 2016: 2020

A frieze of 115 graphite on paper drawings that celebrates the stars who died in 2016. The series starts with English singer//songwriter David Bowie and ends with American actress Debbie Reynolds. This was the year that social media mourned as icons passed away with each day that year brought on. Each drawing comes with a hashtag biography which gives dates of birth and death, nationality, career/reason for fame and cause of death. Each portrait features the hands as powerful elments of the portrait.

Arcadia 2021

Arcadia is a vision of a post lockdown Utopia, after Giorgionne and Titian, saucy shepherds and tattooed ladies mingle and make out in a way that the rest of us could only dream about

 

The Lungs of Love 2011

The Lungs of Love, Graphite on Paper, 48 x 54 ins 2011. This is a drawing made from a found note that forms part of a larger series of Love Letters. Inspired by a found note bearing one word LOVE that was scrawled on a piece of paper. The repetition of the word as if  falling from a great height, with the marks smudged and gouged by rubbing away, creating a sense of movement, with the suggestion of lungs catching a breath as the ribcage expands. There is also a variable edition series of hand finished glitter screen prints made after the original drawing.

 

Black Lives Matter 2020

This series of small scale glitter paintings and prints, inspired by contemporary politics and in particular the Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion marches. The glitter paintings on board work together as a series, or as individual pieces

 

Isolation Heroes 2020

A series of drawings made during lockdown, of people who have spent long periods in solitary confinement and survived. They were made in response to the restriction of movement orders placed on people throughout the world. in 2022 Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was released from gaol in Iran.

 

SUPERFLY: Endangered UK Flora & Fauna 2019

This is a series of portraits of things that crawl, those that fly, some that sprout and others who sting. All of whom are noted as endangered in the UK.

 

 

‘It’s A Hard World For Little Things’  2013-2015
Children Carrying Heavy Objects

‘It’s A Hard World For Little Things’ is a series of large-scale graphite on paper drawings depicting children and what they carry, either physical societal, mental. The subjects in the drawings are cinematic in scale and bigger than the viewer. They show the positive aspects of the burdens that children carry, in the face of a cruel adult world.

 

The Night of the Hunter 2012

These large-scale drawings are inspired by a scene from The Night Of The Hunter, directed in 1955 by Charles Laughton.  This animated sequence shows an owl stalking its prey, we never see the moment of capture, but witness the swoop of the owl and hear the squeal of its quarry.

 

BLACK EYED SUSAN 2009 – 2012

This series of Acrylic ink and pen on canvas paintings, continues a long established way of working that is based on found words, images and notes. The works contain hidden, love letters and erotic images, layered over and turned around until the words become abstracted, distorted and almost impossible to read. During the process the paintings are worked on and rotated until the images have no top or bottom, the viewer being guided only by the forms that emerge.

Black Eyed Susan and Ring are both unavailable

Images from an illustrated talk by Giovanna Forte to BAWE 2022
Giovanna delivers a regular talk about enterprise and opportunity to groups of women in business, such as BAWE, the British Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Sistr, the women’s professional network. These drawings are from a talk that Giovanna gave at Soho House, 180 The Strand, London.
The Butterfly Club, by P.M Young 2022
This is the first in a series of small zine style books, written by a grandmother for her grand daughter who lives with a form of dwarfism called 45X Turner Syndrome. This 16 page booklet charts Scarlett’s discovery of her condition and the hormonal treatment she will receive to make her grow and develop as she reaches puberty.
From PA to PR and what happened when the R fell off:
An illustrated talk by entrepreneur Giovanna Forte
Giovanna delivers a regular talk about enterprise and opportunity to groups of women in business, such as BAWE, the British Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Sistr, the women’s professional network. Seeking a departure from the well-worn powerpoint format, Giovanna commissioned illustrations that capture certain moments in time that have influenced her professional life, from qualifying as a secretary to running a successful medical devices business.
Prescribing in pregnancy: Presentation
The innovation which Giovanna has commercialised is Peezy Midstream; it addresses a simple but overlooked problem of unreliable routine urine screening that adversely impacts women’s health, most especially in pregnancy. She commissioned these slides to illustrate her message that basic improvement in urine collection could transform the quality of routine antenatal screening for mother, child … and NHS finances.

Giovanna says: Cate’s artistry in capturing expression, circumstance and emotion are second to none and the impact of these illustrations is enormous; audiences tell me they convey so much more than a library photograph, charts and bullet points. Powerpoint, your work here is done!