︎
About

Catherine Dee is an artist 
specialising in:

Landscape Architecture
Drawing and Illustration


The current focus of my research, teaching and creative practice is Life amoung trees. My interest is in the development of landscape architecture with trees as a popular artform for all, also being a neccesary and simple climate and ecological strategy for living in and transforming cities.

The projects, writings, and drawings on this website document a longterm creative practice with tree cultivation and wilderness together with up-to-date experiments and research for my forthcoming book: Sylvan landscape design.  

Email: catherine@catherinedee.co.uk

(see also below for Newcastle University email)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/catherinemdee

Background

I have a dual background in contemporary art and  landscape architecture.

I am known for my distinctive use of drawing in accessible and critical approaches to landscape architecture education and for the development of landscape architecture as an everyday artform. I have always experimented with drawing as a means to illustrate landscape architecture concepts and as a form of critique and more recently as a narrative form in which autobiography and depictions of trees are juxtaposed using differing viewpoints and representation conventions. Alongside drawing, I experiment in a small plot designing with trees to find fresh, simple and durable ways to practice ‘DIY’ landscape architecture. 

I’m author of the visual book ‘Form and Fabric in Landscape Architecture’ (2001): an introduction to thinking spatially about landscape and ‘To Design Landscape: Art Nature and Utility’ (2012) which sets out practices for an ethical ‘aesthetics of thrift’. As a founding editor of the innovative peer-reviewed European Journal of Landscape Architecture(JoLA), I also conceived and edited the critical visual essay section of the Journal: ‘Thinking Eye’ until 2012. 

Key exhibitions, installations and workshops include: Swedish Agricultural University SLU (2008) Installations, University of California Berkeley CEED Gallery, Grove Drawing Installations (2014), Kyoto School of Art, Japan, Drawing Workshop (2016), and Arts Council funded Making Ways: ‘Parliament of Trees’ Installation Exhibition at Yorkshire Arts Space Persistence Works, Sheffield (2018). ‘Oxeltid’ Drawing installations at Konstkiosk#4, Trelleborg, Sweden (2021)

In 2019 I left my academic job at Sheffield University and moved to Northumberland to devote more time to creative practice in drawing and book making, while also taking  up a position as
Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture Arts, Newcastle University, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape in 2020.


Newcastle University Email: catherine.dee@newcastle.ac.uk