Kate Valentine

About the artist

Classic headshot of artist Kate Valentine in her studio. She is seated at a glass table surrounded by artwork, her notebook and tablet. She is casually dressed in a fluffy jumper and is looking directly at the camera

Kate Valentine is a painter and printmaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, now living and working on Gayamaygal Country near Manly, NSW.

Valentine’s practice explores native and introduced flora as sustained meditations on place, growth, time and impermanence. Her works reimagine lush environments through intricate, densely layered compositions, stretching botanical forms and flattening pictorial space to draw detail forward into the viewer’s plane. The resulting images balance precision and abundance, inviting close looking while evoking immersive, dreamlike landscapes.

Trained as a printmaker, drawing and composition are central to Valentine’s approach. Her current body of work engages with the visual and spatial language of Japanese printmaking and painting, Manga, and 1990s–2000s Neopop aesthetics, referencing exhibitions such as Hokusai x Manga: Japanese Pop Culture since 1680 (2016) and Jeff Koons: Easyfun Ethereal (2001).

Before returning to full-time studio practice, Valentine held professional roles in libraries and cultural institutions, information policy, and product management, informing a creative practice shaped by research, systems thinking, and material rigor.

Valentine studied printmaking and art history at the Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, graduating with a BFA in Printmaking and a BA in Art History from the University of Auckland and the University of Edinburgh, where she received the Printmaking Prize. She also holds a Master of Information Studies with Distinction from Victoria University of Wellington, supported by a Victoria Graduate Scholarship and awarded the Rosemary Smith-Horton Prize for Digital Technologies.

Kate Valentine is represented by McCarthy Gallery, Australia.

Artist Kate Valentine is sitting on the floor with her dog and selected artworks. She is wearing jeans and a tshirt and is laughing
Close up image of an artwork by Kate Valentine from the Bright Paradise series, showing the corner of the artwork in a wooden frame. The artwork is hot pink blue and green.
Kate Valentine writing in a notebook with a textbook of Japanese woodcuts from the Edo period which is an inspiration for her work
Artist Kate Valentine is painting in the foreground, out of focus. In the background is a large artwork called Declarative Oh Hey I Love You that is bright with blue botanical drawing over a 90s pastel palette