Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
Cate Stetson studied music, writing (she is a published poet), Italian, Italian art history, and received a master’s in creative writing, and a PhD from Vassar with her doctoral dissertation focusing on Ezra Pound. After moving to New Mexico and getting her doctorate in [Native] American Studies, Cate went to law school to become a tribal attorney. After 40+ years of working with tribes as an attorney, lobbyist, and business advisor, she decided it was time to rekindle her painting career.
Her intuitive, expressive mixed media paintings blend abstract and realism with a liberal sprinkling of symbolism. Color is one of the defining qualities of her work, and many of her paintings on wood panels have edgings in variegated metal patterns to complete the image. Cate’s paintings are intended to leave much open to interpretation, engaging the viewer to find personal meanings. This invitation to discover multiple interpretations found its beginnings in many of her poems and academic studies of myth, archetypes, and, later, native symbolism.
For logistical reasons, she often paints in watercolor on kitchen tables in Florence Italy where she spends 2 months each year, going to art shows, visiting with local Italian artists, and generally experimenting with Italian art supplies and media. Her inspirations are often Marino Marini sculptures, in part because of her long-time love of horses.
Her subject matter includes figures and animals, architectural and landscape elements, often juxtaposing sharp geometric forms with softer, fluid organic shapes. Horses are one of her favorite subjects.