Catherine Ade: Garden

About the artist

Based in Bristol, Catherine Ade examines the dualities of identity and the instability of memory. Working primarily through stone lithography, she uses the medium to document her grandparents’ farmhouse, recording both the physical landscape and the transient lives that move through it. The process involves drawing and painting directly onto limestone or grained plates, where the physical act of mark-making mirrors the passage of time.

Water tusche washes are central to Ade’s work, serving as both a technical method and a metaphor for fluidity. These washes evoke rain, tears, and vessels, connecting the material behaviour of the ink to the shifting nature of memory and natural cycles. Her work occupies the space between transitions: the move from exterior to interior, the tension between absence and presence, and the relationship between psychological states and physical depth.

Ade studied at Cardiff Met and UWE Bristol before further specialising at the Tamarind Institute for Lithography. This deep engagement with the medium led her to co-author Lithography: An Artist’s Guide, published by Crowood Press in 2023. Alongside her personal practice, she runs The Lemonade Press, a collaborative lithography studio in Bristol, where she continues to facilitate the technical and expressive possibilities of the stone.