A STATEMENT ABOUT CATE LOUGHRAN’S ART WORK
"If spending time with Loughran’s manipulated and re-imagined realities are not alone enough to heal our spirits, they certainly point us in the right direction to go and find the sights that will make us whole again. Putting the viewer in touch with the finest moments this life has to offer, and thereby showing one how to look for them, is her great gift.
Cate Loughran creates images our souls long for. They are a delicious, visionary teasing of our physical senses. Vibrant, richly colored flowers floating among stars in the black of space. A country road rolling into the distance, into cornfields, forests and a blue sky filled with clouds. Children and animals distilled into the sweet purity of their essences. Cate Loughran selects figures, objects and scenes that she has photographed or painted and reassembles them into new and sometimes surprising compositions. The melding of these individual elements is technically seamless and usually quite convincing, even though they border on or plunge headlong into the surreal.
They give us a glimpse into the majestic beauty and exquisite delicacy of life on earth that hint at something more, something deeper and barely tangible just beyond our grasp. They are sensual and very palpable reminders in this world of the ecstasies lying just beyond the veil of our everyday awareness.
Yet Loughran’s gift is not one gained from some pie-in-the-sky naïve fantasy, but rather from many years of honing her artistic skills combined with a very personal and life-long spiritual pursuit of the truly divine and ineffable."
Michael Bonesteel
Professor of art history at the Art Institute of Chicago and author of Henry Darger: Art and Selected Writings (Rizzoli).
REVIEWS
Michael Bonesteel, art critic and author has written that Cate's Loughran's images "are a heady mixture of sensuality and spirituality... an animation and exuberance not often found. What ultimately recommends these works is their unrelenting optimism and her ability to act as a palate cleanser for the world-weary viewer."
Carol Harmel from the New Art Examiner wrote that Cate Loughran's art is "seen as delicate, graceful, and very clean, as the touch of a butterfly's wing."
"She creates almost classical studies, with colors and forms challenging associations and perceptions." Capital Times
"The images are strong and rise to the elevation of symbols...Even in moments of delicacy, the strength of her imagery is stunning." Isthmus
"Cate Loughran's quietly stunning show...imaginative artist and rigorous technition...gently surrealist. Capital Times