Collection: Kate Maura

Artist Kate Maura is a Toronto based multimedia artist.  Maura graduated from OCAD U with her BFA in 2019. 

These works are part of a new series entitled: On A Cloudy Day and created after Kate was teaching plein air drawing during COVID.  A kaleidoscope of butterflies were flying by her and she began to notice their behaviour and delighted by their flight and colour patterns.  Butterflies are metaphor of transformation and crossing other worlds.  On a rainy cloudy day they will usually find a place to rest and butterflies do not sleep they simply hang from plants or trees and wait until the weather improves for flight.

Using biological imagery of wings and her imagination she creates abstracted images of transformation, with soothing colours of the natural world whilst cloudy or misty. Kate lives by Lake Ontario and walks along the lake everyday with her puppy Clooney.  These colours from the water's edge creep into her work, realizing these creatures find refuge near water…since they use these shorelines to help with their long migrating journeys.  

Overlaying her Irish heritage into her work, so that both the white butterfly from Galway Ireland and the marks from the known species of butterflies in Ontario will make their way into a lot of the imagery. Her father came to Canada in the 50's and they made trips every year back to his home on the sea while she was a child, and then Kate began the same tradition with her own 3 children once her father moved back just outside of Galway to a small fishing village Barna.

Her process involves both historical ways of making and the latest technology and the synthesis of the two methods of making marks is important to the meaning of the work. If we are to move to a better future Kate believes we must do the work to educate ourselves on our history where we came from and the latest technology in order to have a deeper understanding of who we are really, not who we are told we should be and move toward a better future for all on this planet.