Artist Bios
Artist | Catalina Anderson
Catalina is a Western Australian artist who hopes to never stop learning.
She loves producing watercolour studies of the natural world and creating fantastical Dr Seussian style scenes based on scientific discovery and biology. Through her work she aims to spark that childhood wonderment of nature; inviting exploration of its seemingly never-ending diversity of flora & fauna and infusing humour with pop culture references.
Watercolour and ink are her favourite mediums, although this may be trumped by bioluminescence! In 2015 she collaborated with the Perth Science Festival team, Scitech and invited speaker Dr Siouxsie Wiles, microbiologist from the University of Auckland. Experimental artwork was created using Photobacterium phosphoreum, a naturally bioluminescent bacteria usually found in the deep ocean. With the help of PathWest Laboratory Medicine WA and Central Institute of Technology, the bacteria was grown in the lab and could then be used as ‘paint’ on large petri dish canvases. Invisible to the naked eye, the work naturally glowed in the dark and was exhibited along with 3 other artist’s pieces, in the Blue Room Theatre as part of National Science Week.
She has also painted large-scale murals in Perth and has illustrated her first children’s book for Anglicare WA’s Charter of Children’s Rights. She is most at home in the bushland of the Perth hills, or watching the antics of the local wildlife and her two chicken friends in the backyard.