Sydney based painter Kate Dorrough depicts lush vegetation in her paintings, using ‘the garden' as a metaphor for imagination, growth, regeneration and change. Added portraits of women reference fertility, fruitful abundance and recall the domestic sphere in which nature is ordered. The opulence of eighteenth century European salons - where even the wallpaper depicts pastoral and Arcadian mythologies - casts an ongoing influence over works produced following Kate's stay in Paris during a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. The salon was a domestic interior setting, traditionally associated with the feminine and providing a domain for entertainment and pleasure. Plants are often presented in a formal sense, echoing the portraits of women as well as scientific method. The botanical tradition of classification and collection of plant species is a reference point in the work, where an individual plant stands as a portrait. These paintings are themselves a rich and fertile ground for ideas and imagination, containing layers of meaning beneath the rich surfaces and textures of the canvas.

Kate graduated with distinction from the Canberra School of Art in 1987, and travelled to the central desert district of Western Australia to teach painting for a short time. In 1994, she received a Master of Art from the University of New South Wales and travelled to Greece with the University Archaeological Expedition drawing team. Since then, she has had ten solo exhibitions in Sydney and taken part in many group exhibitions including numerous entries in the Salon des Refusés and the Portia Geach Memorial Award. In 1999, Kate was awarded a Bundanon Trust Residency. She has won several awards including the Waverley Art Prize, Fisher's Ghost Art Award and was a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize. Kate's work is represented in several public collections including Sony Music Entertainment (Sydney), Campbelltown Art Gallery (NSW) and Grafton Regional Gallery (NSW).