Catherine Beaudette is a Canadian artist based in Québec and Newfoundland. Her art practice stems from both places where she collects objects, artifacts and specimens to form the basis of her drawings, paintings, photographs and installations. Through the depiction of objects big and small, tools to buildings, Beaudette presents material culture as a record of the world we inhabit. In an activity parallel to that of the museum she creates and displays collections, seeking relationships between natural creation and human production, between what is lost and what is found.
Artist, curator and educator, Beaudette has long been involved in art initiatives that foster collaboration and position art in the public realm. She is founder of Bonavista Biennale, Newfoundland, 2 Rooms Contemporary Art Projects, Duntara, Loop Gallery, Toronto and Howard Park Institute, a window gallery in Toronto’s west end. Beaudette is Adjunct Professor at OCAD University and has been Associate Professor at OCADU from1989 to 2017. During her tenure she initiated a number of OCADU programs including: MFA Graduate Residencies in Florence, Italy and Fogo Island NL; Go West, the annual graduate exhibition in Queen west galleries, and the BFA Program Cross Disciplinary Life Studies.
Beaudette has attended artist residencies in Havana, Cuba, Spain, Serbia/Montenegro, Germany, Banff, Fogo Island, Mexico, and Dawson City. She received her MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1998. She won The RBC Canadian Painting Prize in 2000, and twice has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, in 1982 and 1986. Her curatorial initiatives have been supported with grants from Canadian Heritage, Canada Council for the Arts and ArtsNL. Bonavista Biennale received the 2017 Cultural Tourism Award.