Cate White*

Lot #77
Birthday Girls, 2019
Acrylic, latex, spray paint, glitter on canvas
50 x 56 x 1.5 in.
Courtesy of the artist

About the Artwork

Cate White’s (Headlands Tournesol Award ‘14) symbolically charged narrative paintings illuminate viewers’ personal and collective shadows in relation to class, race, gender, trauma, morality, and power. Birthday Girls was inspired by a snapshot of a friend’s daughter’s birthday party; White notes, “I was struck by the innocent unselfconsciousness of the girls in their bathing suits, contrasted with the large carving knife lying in wait next to the uncut cake. The image evoked for me the dangers that lie ahead for girls entering womanhood.” The girls’ darkly celebratory miens are populated with underlit faces familiar from art historical paintings; on the right we see a face drawn from Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes. White is self-taught; her work received public attention in 2014 with the ProArts 2x2 Solos Exhibition and Headlands’ Tournesol Award, followed by inclusion in the Bay Area Now 8 triennial at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; a Master Artist residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts; the Mills College Art Museum A+P+I residency.

Retail Value: $4,500