Over the Front Range

Cate Hunter Kashem was born in Boston, MA into an artistic family. In high school, she started painting landscapes with her father, renowned painter Robert Douglas Hunter. She always loved making art, but at first her rebellious and independent side resisted the profession that defined her family background. After high school, she earned a scholarship to Boston University, and decided to seek a degree in French.

Soon after she began working in publishing, she realized that only painting on the weekends wasn't sufficient to satiate her hunger for creative expression. She decided to go back to school and studied with Dana Levin at The New School of Classical Art. This small program apprenticed her to a working artist and gave her the hands-on experience she needed to launch a career in fine art.

Cate’s work is influenced by the Boston School tradition, "Classical Realism":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Realism, and "Impressionism":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism. She does not paint from photographs because she prefers to be inspired directly by nature. She begins all her landscapes on location (even during cold New England winters!) and then completes them in her studio in Cambridge, MA. Though she traveled and experienced life outside of the art world, it wasn't until she came back to painting that she felt she had begun her life's true work. In the words of one of her favorite authors, Marcel Proust, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”